“Depends how nice you are to me,” Deese said to her, giving her his nicotine sneer.
“Oh, fuck that,” Cox said.
Cole said, “Geenie and I have developed a relationship, so you’re not getting...” He tried to think of an appropriate word and wound up with “any.”
Deese shook his head. “I’m in Vegas and I’m not getting any. How does that happen? If I—”
“Shut up,” Cole said, in not quite a shout. “Get back on track. If you go after that money... Like I said, it’s a setup. You go out there alone, they’re gonna kill you.”
“What would you do about it?” Deese cocked his eyebrows at Cole and Cox. And with his funny squashed nose and rim of sharp teeth, he looked exactly like a giant weasel, Cox thought.
“If nothing else, we could be lookouts,” Cole said. “I’d go that far, if you’d kick us out... fifty.”
“Let’s talk about it,” Deese said.
—
THEY SETTLEDinto the house to talk and finally agreed that Deese would give them fifteen thousand each to be lookouts. While Deese and Cox were arguing about money, Cole turned onthe television to see if they could get any news about the shooting. They couldn’t, and after a while they were watchingLet’s Make a Deal, and Deese said, “Look at that guy. If I had to dress up like a fuckin’ cockroach to win a few bucks, I wouldn’t do it.”
“We could use the money,” Cox said. “You’d be doing us all a favor.”
“Not if I had to dress up like a fuckin’ cockroach,” Deese said. He pointed at the next contestant. “Look at this chick. What’s she supposed to be, a shrimp? She’d look better as the cockroach. I wouldn’t fuck her with your dick, Cole.”
After another half hour, during a talk show about the legalization of marijuana and the bad effects it was having on Vegas culture, Deese said, “I can’t stand this shit. I’m going down to the Circle K and get some beer and chips and salsa.”
“You’ll get us caught,” Cole said. “We agreed to stay inside.”
“I can’t sit here doing nothing. I need some beer. I got sunglasses and a beard and a hat, nobody will recognize me. I’ll be fifteen minutes.”
“No goddamn casinos,” Cole said. “They got facial recognition there. They can look right through your disguise. They look at the way you walk and the shape of your shoulders, and all that shit. I read about it.”
—
WHEN HE WASGONE, Cox cracked the curtains at the front window and watched him rolling away. He’d taken the burner phone, but she had her own cold phone, and Cole agreed that nobody would have it.
“Let me see your arm,” she said.
“What are you going to do?”
“Listen and learn,” she said. She took her own phone out of her pocket and picked up Deese’s. Deese’s phone had no password protection and she brought up the last call made, and poked the number into her own phone.
—
LARRY BUCKanswered, and Cox asked, “Is this the guy in New Orleans that the other guy called from Las Vegas?”
“Who is this?”
“This is the blonde who is with the other guy in Vegas.”
“One minute.”
Larry Buck covered his phone’s microphone, and Cox couldn’t hear what was being said. Then another voice: “This is the person the man in Las Vegas called.”
Cox asked, “Did you really send money?”
“Yes.”
“How bad do you want it back?” she asked.
