So for the last four and a half hours he'd just been here, listening to a local news radio station, trying to go over old paperwork, waiting for the phone to ring. What's happening? Has the war started? Has the disaster struck? Four A. M. Time to go to bed, though Brandon seriously doubted he'd get much sleep tonight. Still, he ought at least try to maintain his normal schedule; it wouldn't help anybody if he were to come down with a bug tomorrow, would it? So, at 4:00 A. m. exactly, he switched off the news station - grateful that he'd heard no news at all about the Gaiety - and left his office.

Brandon's managerial office suite was directly behind the check-in desk, but his primary route in and out was via a short corridor to a door that opened onto the public s.p.a.ce around the corner from the main desk, between that and the coffee shop, and facing the gla.s.s doors out to the pool area. Coming out here tonight, he wasn't surprised to see no one in the coffee shop or walking by; 4:00 A. M. on a Monday night was always very slow. But he ought at least look in once on the guests in the casino, just to rea.s.sure himself with a faint echo of his normal routine, so that's the direction he turned.

There was no one visible at the desk, but that was also normal. No guests would be checking in at this hour, and if anyone did have a question they could press the bell on the desk and the young woman from the office behind it would step promptly out to be of service.

Brandon walked on by, and saw no one at all at the slot machines, which was slightly unusual. Slot players have more staying power than any other human beings on the planet. Reflecting on that, he walked on by, just peripherally registering the fact that two players were there, crumpled on the floor in front of machines, cardboard cups of coins spilling from their limp hands, when his attention was drawn horribly to the sight of four people unconscious at a blackjack table.

Good G.o.d! The dealer and three players, all sprawled on the half-moonshaped table, dead to the world. And beyond them, another table, three more sleepers.

Brandon stared. He couldn't believe his eyes. People were sleeping on the c.r.a.p tables! They were sleeping on the floor! They were sleeping - Were they sleeping? Or were they...

Poison! Thoughts of botulism, death from his own kitchens, scrambled in Brandon's brain as he hurried forward to the nearest table. Oh, please be alive! Please be alive! They were alive. Their arms were warm. Several of them were snoring. They were alive, they were merely asleep.

"Wake up," Brandon said, and prodded the nearest dealer, a heavyset middle-aged man, who kept right on sleeping. "Wake up," Brandon insisted. "What's going on here?"

But the man would not wake up. Brandon stared around, and it occurred to him he could see none of his guards, none of the security people, not a uniform in sight. Where were they all? What's happened to everybody? Along the wall to the right of the blackjack tables was a plain unmarked doorway, leading to a curved hall with walls papered the same dull green as this part of the casino, and a floor with the same dull red carpeting, the hall angling away out of sight, featureless, uninviting. This hall led to the dayroom, as it was called, which was a small private place where security people could take their breaks. Coffee and tea and pastries were available in there, and chairs and sofas for the guards to sit on, put their feet up, rest from the hours of standing around that was the main ingredient of their jobs. Bewildered, growing frightened, apprehensive of what he might find, Brandon crossed to this doorway, hurried along the curving hall, and came into a room full of sleeping guards, sprawled in furniture and on the floor all over the room. And every one of them lashed wrist and ankle with duct tape.

"Oh, my G.o.d!" Brandon cried, and off to the right a guard in the security uniform, who had been seated with his back to the entrance, stood up and turned around and said, "Well, h.e.l.lo, there."

Brandon thought he would faint. He thought he'd have a heart attack, or at least a humiliating accident in his underwear. He didn't know which element was the more bewildering and the more terrifying: the pistol that was being pointed at him; the gas mask on the guard's face; or the m.u.f.fled metallic sound when the guard spoke, the voice coming through that horrible mask, the mask like a parody of an elephant's head, gross and inhuman.

"I -" Brandon said. "Uh -" he said. His hands moved, accomplishing nothing.

A second guard - no, a second interloper, in a guard's uniform - also stood and pointed his gun and his gas mask at Brandon. "Room for one more," he said, and he had the same m.u.f.fled metallic voice as the first one.

Brandon said, "What's happening? What are you doing?'

The first gas mask turned to the second gas mask and said, "You notice how they all ask that? I would of thought it was obvious what was happening, but they all wanna know."

There were rest rooms beyond the coffeemaker, and from the men's room now came a third man in security uniform and gas mask, who looked at Brandon and then at his friends and said, "What have we got here?"

(These were the three who'd recently dealt with the staff in the security offices.) Brandon thought, Not in my hotel. You can't destroy my hotel, whatever the big cheese may think. This isn't a toy! I have to be strong, he thought, I have to get my wits about me, I must establish authority here. He said, his voice quavering only slightly, "I am the hotel manager. I am Brandon Camberbridge, and you are -"

"That's nice," the first one said. "That's a nice name. Come sit down here."

"I demand," Brandon said, "to know -" The second one said, "Brandon Camberbridge."

Brandon blinked at him, at that horrible gas mask. "What?"

"Sit down or I'll shoot your knee."

(He said that to everybody.) I must argue with them, Brandon thought, I must protest, but even while thinking that, he was nevertheless moving forward, unwillingly but obediently placing himself in the chair indicated, unwillingly but obediently allowing them to tie his wrists and his ankles with duct tape.

"See you later," one of them said.

"Where are you going?" Brandon demanded, with increasing hysteria. "You aren't going to burn it down, are you? Why are you wearing those things on your face?"

They laughed, fuzzy metallic horrible laughs, and one of them leaned forward close enough for Brandon to read the Air Force markings on the boxlike thing at the bottom of the hose-snout on the front of the mask. "It's the latest style," said that nasty tw.a.n.gy voice, like a robot singing a country song.

They all laughed again, and headed for the doorway. "Pleasant dreams," one of them said, and then they were gone.

Pleasant dreams? Was that supposed to be funny, some sort of s.a.d.i.s.tic com- edy? Did they really think he'd be able to sleep? Here? Under these circ.u.mstances? Wide-eyed, Brandon stared around at the sleeping guards. Sleeping. Gas masks.

oh.

It turned out he could hold his breath for under three minutes.

59.

"I'm not really sure," Anne Marie said, "we're supposed to be together, you and me."

"Well," Andy Kelp said, looking out Anne Marie's window at the quiet of the Gaiety grounds, "who knows? I mean, I'm not sure either. But do you think this is the time to ask the question?"

"Well, maybe not," Anne Marie said.

60.

The deal was, Dortmunder had organized the heist, and he would partic.i.p.ate in any profit from it, but he had no part to play in the actual operation itself. This was another of the advantages of having a string of twenty instead of a string of five.

Of course, Dortmunder had not only organized the job, he'd also made it possible. This entire casino/hotel had changed its normal operations, had introduced a lot of uniformed personnel who didn't know the territory and didn't know one another and weren't known by the regulars, had shifted their whole emphasis from guarding the casino to guarding this single individual in cottage one, and that made the robbery possible. Without Dortmunder, this caper couldn't fly. So he could be left alone to do his own little transaction, and would make his move in the confusion following upon the - successful, they all hoped - completion of the main event.

Four-ten A. M. The lights behind the drawn drapes in cottage one had finally switched off twenty minutes ago, but Dortmunder continued to sit in his own semidark in cottage three and watch. There wasn't a chance he would fall asleep at the wrong time tonight, he was too keyed up, he was too ready, he knew this was the end of it. Tonight, he would get back his lucky ring.

So all he had to do was sit here and watch that cottage, to be sure that nothing happened to change the equation. He didn't want Fairbanks to sneak out under cover of darkness, or sneak reinforcements in, didn't want any changes that he didn't know about. So he'd just sit here, and watch, and meantime the heist would go down.

Four-ten A. M. The side door of the Invidia opened and six men stepped out, five of them dressed as guards and carrying under their arms small cardboard cartons that used to be in a storage shed at Nellis Air Force Base. The sixth was dressed as a Gaiety doorman, which came as something of a surprise to the actual doorman when this group approached him, showed him a variety of weapons, and explained he was going to be replaced for a while.

In the limo, Herman saw the group coming, and was pleased that the time was finally here. He'd been getting bored inside this vehicle, with nothing to do but think about the good old days in Talabwo, not getting killed by his nearest and dearest political friends.

The subst.i.tute doorman sat where the original doorman had been seated, and fixed his face into an identical expression of brain-dead somnolence. The five pseudo guards with the boxes under their arms escorted the original doorman into the casino, where more surprises awaited him, including three men in gas masks who took him into the guards' dayroom and hog-tied him with duct tape. The five new guards, who included the two lockmen, Ralph Winslow and Wally Whistler, put on gas masks of their own from those cardboard cartons they'd been carrying and proceeded through the sleeping casino to the cashier's cage at the back.

Herman got out of the limo, leaving his cap on the seat. He also entered the casino, but veered off the other way, around the unmanned check-in desk and into the empty coffee shop, and out its interior door to the bare concrete corridor leading to the kitchens. The kitchens were open for business, for room service or any food the customers in the lounge might want - though on this particular night there hadn't been any orders from the lounge for quite some time - but the kitchen staff paid no attention to the black man in the tuxedo who marched with such confidence through their territory. Out of the kitchen Herman went, and past the garbage room, and veered right into the hallway where Tiny and Jim and Gus were loitering.

Who looked at him with relief. "About time," Tiny said.

"The song begins," Herman told him.

The four of them went off to the loading dock to relieve the guard in the little windowed office there of his duties, Jim taking his place, and then did the same service for the guard at the vehicle barrier, Gus taking his place. Tiny and Herman escorted the two now unemployed guards back to the air room, where they were immobilized and placed next to the sleeping technicians.

Across town, Stan awoke, yawned, stretched, and started the garbage truck.

Wally Whistler and Ralph Winslow bypa.s.sed several alarms to unlock their way into the cashier's cage, where the three cashiers on duty slept peacefully. The two lockmen worked together, cursing quietly inside their gas masks, to countervene even more difficult locks and alarms to get from the cashier's cage back to the counting room, where the cash intake was constantly counted and sorted and stacked, and where the two employees with the rubber fingers on their fingers slept like babies amid messy piles of unsorted greenbacks. And finally, just as difficult as the door to the counting room, was the door to the money room, where the metal shelves were lined with trays containing the neat stacks of money; but they got through that one, too.

And now the lockmen were finished, at least in here. They made their way back out to the main casino area, past doors carefully propped open, and the other six guys in gas masks nodded and went on in. Wally and Ralph walked away through the casino, tossing their gas masks under blackjack tables, and went back out the front door, giving the OK sign to the doorman on their way by, who grinned and forgot for just a second to look stupid.

The six now in the counting room and the money room took black plastic garbage bags out from under their uniform shirts and began stuffing them with money.

Wally and Ralph made their way to the Invidia and entered it, and from inside came a small but rousing cheer. Then Wally and Ralph came out again, each carrying a big plastic gallon bottle of spring water, and they walked from the parking lot around the side of the casino, past the swimming pool and the kiddie pool to the Battle-Lake, where they found Ralph Demrovsky pacing slowly along, looking exactly like a cop on the beat. Wally and Ralph grinned at the other Ralph, and then went on about their business, while Ralph Demrovsky turned and made his deliberate way to the cottages, paused on the path between cottages one and three, and took off his hat. He scratched his head, and put his hat back on.

Dortmunder, in the window of cottage three, lit a match and blew it out. Then he checked the glowing numbers on the dial of the watch he'd borrowed for this evening's work.

Ralph Demrovsky strolled back to the Battle-Lake, in time to see Wally and the lockman Ralph reunite, neither now carrying a bottle of spring water. Ralph Demrovsky took a little machine from his pants pocket, pressed a b.u.t.ton on its top and tossed it into the lake, where it floated in.o.btrusively. Then Wally and Ralph and Ralph all strolled off to the Invidia and climbed aboard. Laughter sounded from within. Then the door opened, and an extremely trussed and irritated Earl Radburn was carried out and laid gently on the tarmac between two parked cars, his head cradled by his hat. His eyes shot sparks, but n.o.body seemed to care.

Herman had some doors to unlock. The first led from a corridor near the kitchens to a side corridor that angled around behind the casino to a second door that needed his services, which led to the casino manager's office, where the night-shift manager slept cozily, head on desk. There were two other doors in this office. The one leading via the manager's secretary's office to the casino floor was not locked, nor was it of interest. The other one was of interest, since it led to the cashier's cage.

This last door was the only one Herman had to deal with while breathing tonight's enriched air, though he wouldn't be in here long enough to feel any real effect. The knowledge, however, did make him a little nervous and caused him to slip slightly and take a few seconds longer than he should have, which annoyed him. He thought of himself as cooler than that.

When Herman opened this last door, it was to find the six guys in guard uniforms and gas masks standing there waiting for him, now all holding full and heavy black plastic bags. There were m.u.f.fled greetings, and Herman led the others back the way he'd come.

In the security offices, the monitors showed all this activity, none of which disturbed the sleepers at all, though the two recently inserted guards, being still awake, did stare at the monitors, and at one another, goggle-eyed.

Stan Murch steered the big garbage truck onto Gaiety property and around back, where Gus waved from his post at the barrier. Stan waved back, drove on in, made a U-turn, backed up against the loading dock, and Herman and the six guards came out. All the plastic bags and all the gas masks were thrown into the back of the garbage truck. Jim and Gus joined Stan in the garbage truck cab, and he drove them away from there.

Most of the people who'd come here in the Invidia, except the subst.i.tute doorman, went back to the Invidia, and Fred and Thelma drove them away.

The three guys who'd dealt with the security offices joined Herman and they walked through the hotel and past the check-in desk, and the other three went on out the front door while Herman paused at the house phones, dialed Anne Marie's room, and let it ring once.

Anne Marie's phone rang once. She and Andy Kelp turned away from the window. "I'm off," Kelp said.

"You must be," Anne Marie told him.

They kissed, and Kelp said, "Will I see you in the city?"

"I'll phone you."

"Okay."

He left, and she went back to the window, to look at the nothing outside and think some more, while Kelp took the elevator down to the lobby and stepped outside. The limo waited, with Herman at the wheel, in his chauffeur's cap. The side windows of the limo were shaded dark, so nothing could be seen inside there. The doorman came over to open the door for Kelp to get aboard, which he did. Then the doorman got aboard after him, and pulled the door shut behind him. Herman put the limo in gear, and it hummed away into the night.

Five minutes later, Dortmunder looked at his watch. "They're done by now," he told himself, and went over to the cottage phone. He dialed 9 for an outside line, and then dialed police headquarters. "I want to report a robbery," he said.

61.

Max dreamt of Elsie Brenstid, the brewer's daughter. She still loved him, but she wanted him to drink warm beer. Then the phone rang. Odd; it was an American phone, not British. Then there were excited voices, disturbances somewhere, and Max opened his eyes. The burglar! Where am I? Las Vegas, the Gaiety, cottage one, waiting for the burglar. Dark in this bedroom, the door outlined in light. But all the lights in the cottage had been switched off when at last he'd come to bed, too exhausted by tension to stay up any longer.

He'd been sleeping in most of his clothes, having taken off only pants and shoes. Now he hurried back into both, listening to the raised voices outside. What was going on? Was this the burglar, or wasn't it? Why didn't somebody come in here to tell him what was happening? Max hurried from the bedroom, just a second before the bathroom window behind him was pushed open and a dark figure, made c.u.mbersome by what he was wearing, climbed cautiously inside.

The scene in the living room was utter confusion. His guards moved this way and that, b.u.mping into one another, hands hovering near holstered sidearms, as they stared at doors and at draped windows, waiting for who knows what. Other guards jittered in the open doorway, looking stunned; the darkness beyond them was full of running people and voices shouting.

On the telephone in the conversation area was Earl Radburn, looking both messier and more furious than Max had ever seen him. The messiness he remarked on first, because Earl was always so neat, so inhumanly perfect in his appearance. But look at him now, grease-smeared, pebble-dotted, dirtdaubed. He looked as though he'd been rolling around in parking lots, for G.o.d's sake.

And as filthy as he was, that's how angry he was. Enraged. Yelling into the phone, demanding action, finally slamming the receiver down, spinning around, glaring at Max, shrieking, "Well, this is what we get!"

"What we get? Earl? What's going on here?"

"The casino was robbed!"

Max couldn't believe it. Robbed? The casino? Stunned, he looked down at his right hand, and the ring was still there, where it was supposed to be. It was still there.

So what could have gone wrong? "Earl? Robbed the casino? Who did? And what on earth for? Acidly, Earl said, "For the money, if you ask me. Probably two million, maybe more."

"The money? But - But it was this ring he was after!"

"That's the G.o.ddam beauty of it," Earl snarled, and with some astonishment (and resentment) Max realized that Earl Radburn was mad at him, at Max Fairbanks, at his employer! "You've got us all," Earl snarled, "bending ourselves out of shape to keep an eye on you and that G.o.ddam ring, and that's just the chance those sons of b.i.t.c.hes needed! It couldn't have worked out better if you were in it with them!"

"Which he was, of course," said a voice from the doorway.

Max turned, blinking, trying to absorb one astonishment after another, and be d.a.m.ned if it wasn't that insane New York City policeman, Klematsky, whatever his name was. Walking in here, bold as bra.s.s, with a pair of Las Vegas uniformed cops behind him.

Max shook his head at this new wonder, saying, "What are you doing here?"

One of the Las Vegas cops said, "You've got yourself a strong gasoline smell out there."

But n.o.body listened to him; there was too much else going on. And particularly what was going on was Detective Klematsky, who came over to Max, smiled in a knowing fashion, and said, "Been busy, haven't you? Up to your old tricks."

"What now, Klematsky?"

Max demanded. "I have no time for you and your nonsense now, this hotel has just been robbed."

"Which you'll be telling us all about, a little later," Klematsky said. "Or was this robbery, while you were actually in residence here, another of your coincidences?"

"What? What?"

"I was going to get here a little later this morning," Klematsky went on. "I didn't figure the local department to wake me at four-thirty, but that's okay. Max Fairbanks, you are under arrest for grand theft, filing false statements and insurance fraud."

"What? What?"

"Here is the warrant for your arrest," the insane and implacable Klematsky went on, "and here is the extradition from a Nevada judge. Come along, we'll have a nice little cell for you to wait in until our flight back to New York."

"Get your hands off me! You're out of your mind!"