Twenty-three
Edie’s first in-person sighting of Rocco Vitali occurred that very afternoon.
He happened to be moving through a crowded casino floor surrounded by a retinue of young men in cheap shiny suits and girls in see-through dresses so short that nothing was left to the imagination.
The constant sound of bells and shouts from the slot machines, and the strobing lights when there was a winner, made it seem as if he was walking a runway.
Rocco was not a handsome man, but he wasn’t ugly, either.
He had dark hair, full lips, almond-shaped eyes that managed to look too feminine and too masculine at once.
His gaze darted around the crowds to spot the patrons who recognized him.
That reminded Edie of his grandfather Vincent, who had been the very definition of a showboat.
Rocco was a full-of-himself apple that had fallen not far from the full-of-himself tree.
And he was in luck, because there were plenty of people on the casino floor who recognized him. They came forward to congratulate him with You’re the man, and Crypto rules, and This place slaps. Edie did not know how a place could slap anything, much less what that meant.
She could feel the rage bubbling inside her as he sashayed through. Her face was probably turning so red that anyone taking a close look might fear she was headed for a heart attack. What had Marcy seen in this douche?
Her resolve to end Rocco Vitali hardened.
She forced her gaze away from the peacock and took in the place.
The casino was old school. Everything in Vegas looked modern and sexy compared to fifty years ago, but the moment she walked through the Pelican’s doors and into its seventies décor, she felt like she was walking back in time.
Doors, reception desks, and architectural features on the main casino floor were decked out in brass and gold.
The thick carpet underneath her feet was a pattern of geometric shapes and colors that reminded her of a minidress she’d had in the sixties.
The ceiling over the main floor was domed, and huge chandeliers hung over the slot and gaming areas.
The massive fountain in the center—a sculpture of three full-sized half-naked women pouring baskets of water into a pool—added an air of mustiness.
The only modern thing on the floor were the giant flat-screen televisions suspended over the casino floor and gaming area, all of them showing Rocco’s fat face talking about the casino. The chyron read MAN OF THE FUTURE.
He probably typed it in himself. Asshole.
The good thing about the casino was that it was packed, which was good—the vault would be stuffed with cash to back up the chips on the floor.
She noted four exits: the two grand entry doors; the wall of double glass doors in the back, which led to the parking lot; and two smaller side doors for staff and people coming in from the side streets.
The resident security was easy to spot, too—there were three “eyes in the sky” overhead, or cameras that covered the floor of the casino.
She could see more mounted on walls around the room.
In addition, floormen walked among the gaming tables, keeping an eye on chips and cash.
Uniformed security guards manned the exits. Edie noticed that one of the guards, a woman, was overly chatty with the workers who walked past her little podium. That friendliness could be useful.
She came upon a large, gray trash pushcart.
The maintenance worker was distracted, having a conversation with another worker.
Edie breezily took hold of the pushcart and walked on with it, headed for the chatty female security guard to make friends.
She had to manhandle the thing out of the way a few moments later when the Rocco entourage returned, making another sweep of the casino floor.
As he sailed by this time, he balled a paper up in his hand and shot a three-pointer in her direction over the heads of his buddies. It landed in her cart.
His friends applauded, one of them clapping him on the back. “Losers,” Edie whispered. She watched Rocco disappear behind one of the restricted doors, then calmly reached for the balled-up paper from the mound of trash and smoothed it out against the rim of the cart and read it.
The Nest
6:30
Thurs
The Nest was the high-end restaurant in the casino that she and Frances had clocked walking in. Edie balled up the paper and tossed it back into the can and carried on to the friendly security guard.
She was the last to arrive back at the house that evening. She was armed with her observations and knowledge of where Rocco would be Thursday night.
The girls were seated around the rickety kitchen table piled with pizza boxes. Frances was still in her maid uniform, but Joan and Irene had changed into loungewear.
The pizza smelled heavenly. Edie pulled up a chair and sat heavily before helping herself to a slice of pepperoni. She took a bite and flavor exploded in her mouth. “So good. Where’d you get it?”
“Skinner and Todd,” Irene answered.
Edie paused before taking a second bite. “You called Skinner for pizza?”
“Technically, Fran texted him. He did say he was available for anything, and we all know a hustler hustles.”
“I also needed help finding a place to make some work badges,” Joan added, and picked up a badge from the table and held it out to show Edie. “I found this at the casino.”
Edie leaned forward to have a look. The employee badge belonged to Manuel Gomez, a smiling young man who was part of the grounds crew. “But what about the electronic part?” Edie asked, gesturing to the badge. “They’re designed to be used with card readers.”
“Funny,” Joan said, and affected a breathy voice. “Our badges were working yesterday, and we can’t imagine why they aren’t now. You can’t get anything made right anymore, you know. These probably come from China.”
Edie laughed. “Did Skinner know a place?”
“Not only did he know, but he also has someone who can work on them, no questions asked.”
“We need to keep that kid close.”
“We were just beginning to go over what we’ve got and what we need to do when you came in,” Frances said.
Edie noticed she’d only taken a couple of bites from the slice on her paper plate.
“From the sound of things, we’ve been surprisingly productive.
” Frances reached into her tote and withdrew four small spiral reporter notebooks and a pack of pens.
She opened the pack and spilled the pens on the table next to the pizza, then handed out the notebooks.
“We really shouldn’t be writing anything down,” Irene warned.
“We should not,” Frances agreed. “Unfortunately, I can’t remember my own name without writing it down.”
“Same,” Edie said, and held out her hand for a notebook.
“We’ll burn them later,” Joan said. “Okay, let’s get started. This sort of has the feel of our one Venice job.”
“Venice!” Frances said on a dreamy sigh. “Now that was a good time, wasn’t it? Until Irene decked me.”
“You should have expected it,” Irene said.
Edie’s mind wandered back to Venice and that grand old hotel with the vintage safe that held the valuables of Europe’s elite, including stacks of cash.
Before ATMs and international credit cards, rich people traveled with traveler’s checks and cold hard cash.
And a lot of it. They’d heard about the casino in Venice from a girl they’d met in Spain.
She was slim, with coal-black hair and dark brown eyes.
She said she was Greek, and she knew a lot about Europe’s elite.
She especially knew about a man from Italy who was quite wealthy and quite abusive.
The black eye the girl sported was testament to that.
The way that girl (her name escaped Edie now) described Venice, it sounded too good to be true. The four of them decided to go for it. Edie and Frances dropped out of that semester in college and away they’d gone, flush with money from another job and ready to party.
The heist had been simple enough after Joan somehow managed to get a job in the casino’s laundry with access to all areas of the building, including the lower rooms where the vault was housed.
Edie had pretended to be a reporter from Life magazine and had convinced the concierge to give her a tour of the casino, which is how she managed to lay eyes on the safe.
They’d spent several days planning the job.
On the designated night, Frances and Irene were to provide the diversion.
They’d dressed in their skimpiest dresses.
At the time, Irene’s hair was long and sleek, and Frances’s hair had been a stunning shade of red, a color she’d given herself the night before.
“I remember how heads turned when you and Irene walked into the lounge,” Edie reminisced.
Irene laughed. “There was a stretch of time in there that I wanted to look like you and Frances, long and lanky and sexy.”
“It worked,” Frances said. “You were so exotic.”
“You’re not supposed to say that anymore,” Irene said with a chuckle. “But I did look good, didn’t I?”
As the story went, men had plied them with drinks.
“And let their hands wander,” Frances added, with a roll of her eyes.
“Was there a man alive back then who didn’t believe a purchase of a drink bought at least one free grope?
And then there were those who suggested we could have a lot more fun upstairs in a penthouse or the presidential suite, or a local apartment. ”
“Things were pretty rape-y in the seventies,” Joan said.
“Eh,” Frances said with a flick of her wrist. “I can’t blame it all on men. I wasn’t exactly a shrinking wallflower.”
“Remind us how it went down in the lounge,” Edie said. She knew very well how it went, but it was fun to relive it.
“Well, we were leading a drunkfest until we got the signal,” Frances said.
“Which was Joan walking by,” Irene chimed in. “That was our clue to cause a scene.”