“Do we have a number?” Harris asks.
“Someone’s doing inventory now. The assistant manager says twenty million on the low end.”
“Am I correct in thinking that’s a record for this town?”
“I fucking hope so,” Ramirez says.
“Is there an injured list?”
“The Graff guard has a few cracked ribs but he’ll be fine.”
“Where are we with the traffic cameras?”
“Someone took out two cameras on Sahara Avenue ten minutes before these guys showed up.”
“Took them out?”
“Sorry, shot them out. From the back seat of a black Yukon with no plates. Small-caliber rifle, probably a .22.”
“And they used Sahara to get on and off the Strip.”
“Correct.”
“So we have no idea where these guys went. Or came from.”
Ramirez shakes his head.
“Four men on bikes with automatic weapons materialize outside a casino and disappear into thin air.”
“We’re double-checking everything,” Ramirez says. “But yeah, the headline writes itself. Looks like they called in a bullshit 413 to draw our guys downtown. Two calls, both from burner phones.”
“What about this kid who filmed them?”
“He’s pretty shaken up. The parents turned the phone over, but the father sent the video to at least three people.”
“Do you have a copy or should we watch it on YouTube?”
Ramirez pulls the video up on his phone.
“Wired for sound inside those helmets,” he says, as Riders 2 and 4 spot Jeremy for the first time. “No one heard them say a word, but watch the head movement. They’re discussing what to do about this kid.”
“Did anybody hear them talk?” Harris asks.
“The girl who opened the safe said the tall one sounded American, but the helmet made it hard to hear. And she was scared shitless. Still is.”
“Odds that she was in on it?”
“We’re looking into her. I’d say zero if I had to lay a paycheck on it.”
When Rider 1 emerges from the store and walks toward Jeremy, Harris presses pause.
“One thing I’d lay a paycheck on,” he says. “This guy right here’s in charge.”
*
AT 7:25 P.M., Shannon stands outside The Griffin, an old-school cocktail bar downtown. She came here with college boy and his friends when the pool party ended early due to an incident next door. People gathered on the sidewalk where word of the robbery rippled through the crowd. Strangers huddled and gossiped, drawn to each other as if they’d flown through a lightning storm and landed safely. No one wanted to go home so Shannon suggested The Griffin, where college boy ordered a round of Irish car bombs. As she dropped a shot into her pint of Guinness, Shannon decided on an Irish goodbye. When her new friend hit the men’s room, she slipped out the door.
The Ecstasy hasn’t quite worn off, and Shannon craves the heat and pressure of a body against hers. She scrolls through her texts, weighing several friends with benefits before messaging a tall and much younger Australian who her friends call Captain Kangaroo behind his back. He’s rough around the edges—questionable manners, bad haircut, worse tattoos—but handsome enough, cut like a classical sculpture, and remarkably good at going down on her, which is the deciding factor tonight. Behind her, a bouncer discusses the robbery with a bachelor party from Seattle.
“Unreal,” one man says. “Fuckin’ Wild West out here.”
Shannon smiles to herself and lights a cigarette. Captain Kangaroo is not a great communicator, but minutes later he responds to her hey mister with hey what’s up w u? He’s watching the game at a mate’s place, he says. Does he want to watch at hers? He does. He can be there in an hour. Shannon hails a cab.
Craig Hollinger knocks on the door to her condo ninety minutes later, helmet in one hand, sweating bottle of Champagne in the other.
“Wow,” she says as she accepts the wine. “Are we celebrating?”
“Why not, right?”
“I like it. Come inside.”
In the kitchen, she takes two wineglasses from the dishwasher and rinses them out in the sink.
“Do you want to put the game on?” Shannon asks.
“The game?”
“The one you were watching.”
“That’s all right. Reckon it’s over now.”
“Guess where I was earlier.”
“On the golf course.”
“No, silly,” Shannon says. “At the Wynn.”
“Yeah? Did you win big?”
“Did you not hear what happened?”
Craig shakes his head.
“These guys on motorcycles robbed the place. Made me think of you, actually. You and your big fast bike.”
“Robbed the cashier?”
“No, they rode into the Esplanade and cleaned out Graff.”
“What’s Graff?”
“Obnoxiously expensive jewelry. Stuff you should buy the women in your life when you get your act together.”
Craig smiles. “How’d they ride out after they robbed the place? Someone hold the door for them?”
“I don’t know,” Shannon says. “They did, though. It’s all over the news.”
“That,” he says, pressing his body against hers, “sounds like a bullshit rumor.”
Shannon pushes him away and peels the foil off the cork.
“Take your coat off,” she says. “Stay a while.”
Craig gingerly removes his jacket, wincing as he frees his right arm from the sleeve. Even the loose waffled cotton of a long-sleeve Henley can’t hide his swollen, bandaged shoulder.
“Holy shit,” she says. “What happened?”
“Took a bad spill at the track this morning,” Craig says. “Nothing serious.”
“Are you sure it’s not broken?”
“Broken? Nah. It’s just a bump.”
“You should be icing it.”
She’s halfway to the fridge when her phone buzzes with a text.
“There’s a video,” she says. “Of the robbery. My friend just sent it to me. Are you ready to be wrong?”
“You want to watch that now?”
“Definitely,” Shannon says. “Don’t you?”
She holds her phone between them. On-screen, a local news anchor is shuffling his papers between segments.
“… and the ranchers say they’re looking forward to their day in court. Finally this evening, we have exclusive body-camera footage from the officers who confronted a pair of thieves near the Wynn hotel and casino after four armed men made off with an estimated twenty-two million dollars in jewels earlier today. Take a look.”
The body cam is trained on East Sahara Avenue through the windshield of a cop car. A call comes in over the radio, and Officer Sullivan jumps out of the vehicle and sprints between two lanes of stopped traffic, his pistol pointed down the Strip.
“Told you,” Shannon says, as the bike comes into view.
The image jerks when Sullivan fires his gun. The man behind the handlebars is obviously hit, and the scene blurs as the two officers dive for cover.
“The LVMPD is asking anyone with information about the suspects you just saw to call the number on your screen,” the anchor says.