Kitty's Mix-Tape Read online

  The woman was even following the same pattern—push a stack of chips forward, hit no matter how unlikely or counterintuitive, and win. She had five grand sitting in front of her.

  One other player sat at the table, and he seemed not to notice the spectacle beside him. He was in his thirties, craggy-looking, crinkles around his eyes, a serious frown pulling at his lips. He wore a white tuxedo shirt without jacket or bow tie, which meant he was probably a local, someone who worked the tourist trade on the Strip. Maybe a bartender or a limo driver? He did look familiar, now that she thought about it, but Julie couldn’t place where she might have seen him. He seemed to be killing time, making minimum bets, playing conservatively. Every now and then he’d make a big bet, a hundred or two hundred, but his instincts were terrible, and he never won. His stack of chips, not large to begin with, was dwindling. When he finally ran out, Julie would be sorry to see him go, because she’d be alone with the strange housewife.

  The woman kept winning.

  Julie signaled to Ryan, who got on the phone with security. They watched, but once again, couldn’t find anything. Unless she was spotted palming cards, the woman wasn’t breaking any rules. Obviously, some kind of ring was going on. Two unlikely players winning in exactly the same pattern—security would record their pictures, watch for them, and might bar them from the casino. But if the ring sent a different person in every time, security would never be able to catch them, or even figure out how they were doing it.

  None of it made sense.

  The man in the tuxedo shirt reached into his pocket, maybe fumbling for cash or extra chips. Whatever he drew out was small enough to cup in his fist. He brought his hand to his face, uncurled his fingers, and blew across his palm, toward the woman sitting next to him.

  She vanished, only for a heartbeat, flickering in and out of sight like the image on a staticky TV. Julie figured she’d blinked or that something was wrong with her eyes. She was working too hard, getting too tired, something. But the woman—she stared hard at the stone-faced man, then scooped her chips into her oversized handbag, rushing so that a few fell on the floor around her, and she didn’t even notice. Hugging the bag to her chest, she fled.

  Still no tip, unless you counted what she dropped.

  The man rose to follow her. Julie reached across the table and grabbed his arm.

  “What just happened?” she demanded.

  The man regarded her with icy blue eyes. “You saw that?” His tone was curious, scientific almost.

  “It’s my table, of course I saw it,” she said.

  “And you see everything that goes on here?”

  “I’m good at my job.”

  “The cameras won’t even pick up what I did,” he said, nodding to the ceiling.

  “What you did? Then it did happen.”

  “You’d be better off if you pretended it didn’t.”

  “I know what I saw.”

  “Sometimes eyes are better than cameras,” he said, turning a faint smile.

  “Is everything all right?” Ryan stood by Julie, who still had her hand on the man’s arm.

  She didn’t know how to answer that and blinked dumbly at him. Finally, she pulled her arm away.

  “Your dealer is just being attentive,” the man said. “One of the other players seemed to have a moment of panic. Very strange.”

  Like he hadn’t had a hand in it.

  Ryan said, “Why don’t you take a break, Julie? Get something to eat, come back in an hour.”

  She didn’t need a break. She wanted to flush the last ten minutes out of her mind. If she kept working, she might be able to manage, but Ryan’s tone didn’t invite argument.

  “Yeah, okay,” she murmured, feeling vague.

  Meanwhile, the man in the white shirt was walking away, along the casino’s carpeted main thoroughfare, following the woman.

  Rushing now, Julie cleaned up her table, signed out with Ryan, and ran after the man.

  “You, wait a minute!”

  He turned. She expected him to argue, to express some kind of frustration, but he remained calm, mildly inquisitive. As if he’d never had a strong emotion in his life. She hardly knew what to say to that immovable expression.

  She pointed. “You spotted it—you saw she was cheating.”

  “Yes.” He kept walking—marching, rather—determinedly. Like a hunter stalking a trail before it went cold. Julie followed, dodging a bachelorette party—a horde of twenty-something women in skin-tight mini-dresses and overteased hair—that hadn’t been there a moment ago. The man slipped out of their way.

  “How?” she said, scrambling to keep close to him.

  “I was counting cards and losing. I know how to count—I don’t lose.”

  “You were—” She shook the thought away. “No, I mean how was she doing it? I couldn’t tell. I didn’t spot any palmed cards, no props or gadgets—”

  “He’s changing the cards as they come out of the shoe,” he said.

  “What? That’s impossible.”

  “Mostly impossible,” he said.

  “The cards were normal, they felt normal. I’d have been able to tell if something was wrong with them.”

  “No, you wouldn’t, because there was nothing inherently wrong with the cards. You could take every card in that stack, examine them all, sort them, count them, and they’d all be there, exactly the right number in exactly the number of suits they ought to be. You’d never spot what had changed because he’s altering the basic reality of them. Swapping a four for a six, a king for a two, depending on what he needs to make blackjack.”

  She didn’t understand, to the point where she couldn’t even frame the question to express her lack of understanding. No wonder the cameras couldn’t spot it.

  “You keep saying ‘he,’ but that was a woman—”

  “And the same person who was there yesterday. He’s a magician.”

  The strange man looked as if he had just played a trick, or pushed back the curtain, or produced a coin from her ear. Julie suddenly remembered where she’d seen him before: in a photo on a poster outside the casino’s smaller theater. The magic show. “You’re Odysseus Grant.”

  “Hello, Julie,” he said. He’d seen the name tag on her uniform vest. Nothing magical about it.

  “But you’re a magician,” she said.

  “There are different kinds of magic.”

  “You’re not talking about pulling rabbits out of hats, are you?”

  “Not like that, no.”

  They were moving against the flow of a crowd; a show at one of the theaters must have just let out. Grant moved smoothly through the traffic; Julie seemed to bang elbows with every single person she encountered.

  They left the wide and sparkling cavern of the casino area and entered the smaller, cozier hallway that led to the hotel wing. The ceilings were lower here, and plastic ficus plants decorated the corners. Grant stopped at the elevators and pressed the button.

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “You really should take a break, like your pit boss said.”

  “No, I want to know what’s going on.”

  “Because a cheater is ripping off your employer?”

  “No, because he’s ripping off me.” She crossed her arms. “You said it’s the same person who’s been doing this, but I couldn’t spot him. How did you spot him?”

  “You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself. How would you even know what to look for? There’s no such thing as magic, after all.”

  “Well. Something’s going on.”

  “Indeed. You really should let me handle this—”

  “I want to help.”

  The doors slid open, and Julie started to step through them, until Grant grabbed her arm so hard she gasped. When he pulled back, she saw why: the elevator doors had opened on an empty shaft, an ominous black tunnel with twisting cable running down the middle. She’d have just stepped into that pit without thinking.

  She fell back and
clung to Grant’s arm until her heart sank from her throat.

  “He knows we’re on to him,” Grant said. “Are you sure you want to help?”

  “I didn’t see it. I didn’t even look.”

  “You expected the car to be there. Why should you have to look?”

  She would never, ever take a blind step again. Always, she would creep slowly around corners and tread lightly on the ground before her. “Just like no one expects a housewife or a businessman from the Midwest to cheat at table games in Vegas.”

  “Just so.”

  The elevator doors slid shut, and the hum of the cables, the ding of the lights, returned to normal. Normal—and what did that mean again?

  “Maybe we should take the stairs,” Julie murmured.

  “Not a bad idea,” Grant answered, looking on her with an amused glint in his eye that she thought was totally out of place, given that she’d almost died.

  Down another hallway and around a corner, they reached the door to the emergency stairs. The resort didn’t bother putting any frills into the stairwell, which most of its patrons would never see: The tower was made of echoing concrete, the railings were steel, the stairs had nonskid treads underfoot. The stairs seemed to wind upward forever.

  “How do you even know where he is? If he knows you’re looking for him, he’s probably out of town by now.”

  “We were never following him. He’s never left his room.”

  “Then who was at my table?”

  “That’s a good question, isn’t it?”

  This was going to be a long, long climb.

  Grant led, and Julie was happy to let him do so. At every exit door, he stopped, held before it a device that looked like an old-fashioned pocket watch, with a brass casing and a lumpy knob and ring protruding. After regarding the watch a moment, he’d stuff it back in his trouser pocket and continue on.

  She guessed he was in his thirties, but now she wasn’t sure—he seemed both young and old. He moved with energy, striding up the stairs without pause, without a hitch in his breath. But he also moved with consideration, with purpose, without a wasted motion. She’d never seen his show, and thought now that she might. He’d do all the old magic tricks, the cards and rings and disappearing box trick, maybe even pull a rabbit from a hat, and his every motion would be precise and enthralling. And it would all be tricks, she reminded herself.

  After three flights, she hauled herself up by the railing, huffing for air. If Grant was frustrated at the pauses she made on each landing, he didn’t let on. He just studied his watch a little longer.

  Finally, on about the fifth or sixth floor, he consulted his watch and lifted an eyebrow. Then he opened the door. Julie braced for danger—after the empty elevator shaft, anything could happen: explosions blasting in their faces, ax-wielding murderer waiting for them, Mafioso gunfight—but nothing happened.

  “Shall we?” Grant said, gesturing through the doorway as if they were entering a fancy restaurant.

  She wasn’t sure she really wanted to go, but she did. Leaning in, she looked both ways, up and down the hallway, then stepped gingerly on the carpet, thinking it might turn to quicksand and swallow her. It didn’t. Grant slipped in behind her and closed the door.

  This wing of the hotel had been refurbished in the last few years and still looked newish. The carpet was thick, the soft recessed lighting on the russet walls was luxurious and inviting. In a few more years, the décor would start to look worn, and the earth-tones and geometric patterns would look dated. Vegas wore out things the way it wore out people. For now, though, it was all very impressive.

  They lingered by the emergency door; Grant seemed to expect something to happen. Consulting his watch again, he turned it to the left and right, considering. She craned her neck, trying to get a better look at it. It didn’t seem to have numbers on its face.

  “What’s that thing do?” she asked.

  “It points,” he said.

  Of course it did.

  He moved down the hallway to the right, glancing at the watch, then at doorways. At the end of the hall, he stopped and nodded, then made a motion with his hands.

  “More magic?” she said, moving beside him.

  “No. Lockpick.” He held up a flat plastic key card. “Universal code.”

  “Oh my God, if the resort knew you were doing this—and I’m right here with you. I could lose my job—”

  “They’ll never find out.”

  She glanced to the end of the hallway, to the glass bubble in the ceiling where the security camera was planted.

  “Are you sure about that? Am I supposed to just trust you?”

  His lips turned a wry smile. “I did warn you that you probably ought to stay out of this. It’s not too late.”

  “What, and take the elevator back down? I don’t think so.”

  “There you go—you trust me more than the elevator.”

  She crossed her arms and sighed. “I’m not sure I agree with that logic.”

  “It isn’t logic,” he said. “It’s instinct. Yours are good, you should listen to them.”

  She considered—any other dealer, any sane dealer, would have left the whole problem to Ryan and security. Catching cheaters once they left the table was above her pay grade, as they said. But she wanted to know. The same prickling at her neck that told her something was wrong with yesterday’s businessman and today’s housewife, also told her that Odysseus Grant had answers.

  “What can I do to help?” she asked.

  “Keep a look out.”

  He slipped the card in the lock, and the door popped open. She wouldn’t have been surprised if an unassuming guest wrapped in a bath towel screamed a protest, but the room was unoccupied. After a moment, Grant entered and began exploring.

  Julie stayed by the door, glancing back and forth, up and down the hallway as he had requested. She kept expecting guys from security to come pounding down the hallway. But she also had to consider: Grant wouldn’t be doing this if he didn’t have a way to keep it secret. She couldn’t even imagine how he was fooling the cameras. The cameras won’t even pick up what I did, he’d said. Did the casino’s security department even know what they had working under their noses?

  She looked back in the room to check his progress. “You expected that watch, that whatever it is, to lead you right to the guy, did you?”

  “Yes, it should have,” Grant said, sounding curious rather than frustrated. “Ah, there we are.” He opened the top bureau drawer.

  “What?” She craned forward to see.

  Using a handkerchief, he reached into the drawer and picked up a small object. Resting on the cloth was a twenty-five dollar chip bound with twine to the burned-down stub of a red candle. The item evoked a feeling of dread in her; it made her imagine an artifact from some long-extinct civilization that practiced human sacrifice. Whatever this thing was, no good could ever come of it.

  “A decoy,” Grant said. “Rather clever, really.”

  “Look, I can call security, have them check the cameras, look for anyone suspicious—they’ll know who’s been in this room.”

  “No. You’ve seen how he’s disguising himself; he’s a master of illusion. Mundane security has no idea what they’re looking for. I’ll find him.” He broke the decoy, tearing at the twine, crumbling the candle, throwing the pieces away. Even broken, the pieces made her shiver.

  Then they were back in the hallway. Grant again consulted his watch, but they reached the end of the hallway without finding his quarry.

  They could be at this all day.

  “Maybe we should try knocking on doors. You’ll be able to spot the guy if he answers.”

  “That’s probably not a good idea. Especially if he knows we’re coming.”

  “How long until you give up?” she said, checking her phone to get the time. The thing had gone dead, out of power. Of course it had. And Grant’s watch didn’t tell time.

  “Never,” he murmured, returning to the emergency
stairs.

  She started to follow him when her eye caught on an incongruity, because the afternoon had been filled with them. A service cart was parked outside a room about halfway down the hallway. Dishes of a picked-over meal littered the white linen table cloth, along with an empty bottle of wine, and two used wineglasses. Nothing unusual at all about seeing such a thing outside a room in a hotel. Except she was absolutely sure it had not been there before.

  “Hey—wait a minute,” she said, approaching the cart slowly. The emergency stair door had already shut, though, and he was gone. She went after him, hauling open the door.

  Which opened into a hallway, just like the one she’d left.

  Vertigo made her vision go sideways a moment, and she thought she might faint. Shutting the door quickly, she leaned against it and tried to catch her breath. She’d started gasping for air. This was stupid—it was just a door. She’d imagined it. Her mind was playing tricks, and Grant was right, she should have stayed back in the casino.

  No, she was a sensible woman, and she trusted her eyes. She opened the door again, and this time when she saw the second, identical—impossible—hallway through it, she stayed calm, and kept her breathing steady.

  Stepping gently, she went through the door, careful to hold it open, giving her an escape route. Her feet touched carpet instead of concrete. She looked back and forth—same hallway. Or maybe not—the room service cart wasn’t here.

  “Odysseus?” she called, feeling silly using the name. His stage name, probably, but he hadn’t given her another one to call him. His real name was probably something plain, like Joe or Frank. On second thought, considering the watch, the universal lockpick, his talk of spells, his weird knowledge—Odysseus might very well be his real name.

  “Odysseus Grant?” she repeated. No answer. Behind one of the doors, muted laughter echoed from a television.

  She retreated to the original hallway and let the door close. Here, the same TV buzzing with the same noise, obnoxious canned laughter on some sitcom. She could believe she hadn’t ever left, that she hadn’t opened the door and seen another hallway rather than the stairs that should have been there. This was some kind of optical illusion. A trick done with mirrors.