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But, in Leonardo’s mind, one casino was just the beginning. He’d been meaning to hit each and every one of those. It would take him days to do so, but he was going to love every minute of it. So, during that long drive, the man wouldn’t shut up about his plan to win in pretty much every game available to him. There were times when I thought I was listening to a ten-year-old. He sounded like he knew every trick in the book and was going to outsmart dealers and machines alike. And I would have loved to yell in his face once or twice, had it not been for my conversations with Cesare. More often than not, we would get to talk about Howard Kanin and his role in the recent developments with Maggie’s crew. Those chats had quite an effect on Leonardo, too. They shut him up and sparked his interest in the task at hand. It should have been on his mind in the first place, but this was Leonardo. A visit to his most favorite city in America had messed with his head too much to ignore it.
Almost three days after we’d set off from the Big Apple, Cesare’s Torino crossed the city limits. I did expect Leonardo to get all excited when he saw that famous sign:
Welcome to: Fabulous
Las Vegas
Nevada
Thankfully, he proved me wrong. He just whistled at the city lights and pointed up ahead. Once Cesare had left Las Vegas Boulevard, he lost his appetite to comment on the sparkly view of Sin City.
As we neared the Atlas Construction building, it dawned on me that Rocco DeLuca had made a very good point. There were skyscrapers all around us. Skyscrapers meant people, and people equaled witnesses. Attempting to go anywhere near Kanin in the middle of the day would get us all thrown in a jail cell.
Cesare following Julian’s car, we left the main road. The head of Maggie’s security pulled over, the Atlas building on our left. It was large and wide, much like most buildings in downtown Manhattan. The lobby was dark and empty. I looked up at the windows on each floor. There were no lights on whatsoever.
Just after 2:30am, I looked in the rearview mirror. There were still cars rolling up and down the road behind us. It wasn’t exactly a traffic jam, but it wasn’t what I’d call “light traffic.” Julian and Slater jogging over to the side entrance, my boys and I joined them.
“I just got a call from Rocco,” Julian said and rolled his mask down his face. “We left him at Neon Tassels about an hour ago. He hired those strippers and he just arrived at Graham’s place.”
“Good,” I commented, pulling my backpack off my shoulder. “Boys, you might want to stand back. Form a circle around me; I don’t want passersby to see what I’m doing here.”
“What’s that?” Slater asked, the moment I held the laser cutter in my grasp.
“Our way in,” I spoke, holding the cutter vertical to the glass. At the push of the button on top, a red laser beam struck the surface, causing a tiny puff of smoke to rise from the glass. I held the cutter steady, starting to draw a large circle. The smell of burning glass getting stronger and stronger, I saw the men’s reflection. Julian and Slater were standing next to one another on my left, with Cesare and Leonardo right behind me. The laser beam completing a full circle, I used the device to push the glass back. That chunk dropped to the floor with a thump, my ears catching the buzz of a cell phone.
“Not bad,” Julian commented, Slater holding his phone up to his ear.
“Yeah?”
“I’ve got Graham.”
“Sweet. How long till you get here? We’re going in now.”
“Good. Ten minutes or so.”
I put the laser cutter back in my backpack and zipped it up. I crouched through the hole, for a moment considering using the flashlight in my pocket. There wasn’t much light in there. The light pole right across the street provided little illumination. I could hardly make out the grouts in between the tiles as I straightened myself out. Yet even a single beam of light could give away our presence. So, when I reached the far side of that lobby, I pulled my mask down my face while Leonardo set his bag down on the floor.
“Here,” he said, slamming a rifle into my palm.
“Over there,” Julian spoke, pointing at a closed door down the hall and to the right.
We jogged off, heavy footsteps resounding through the lobby, the faint noise of cars passing by coming through the glass façade. Being the last one to enter that storage room, I kept the door open. My side to the four guys behind me, I stood by the pane and looked out. A car’s headlights washing across the road, I turned to Julian.
“They’re here,” I said, my voice a little more than a whisper.
The headlights switched off, and Rocco’s large figure stepped out and reached the rear door. In a matter of seconds, he was dragging a smaller man towards the hole in the glass. Thrashing and kicking, hands bound together, that man attempted to break free from the vise-like grip around his neck.
It wasn’t going to happen.
Rocco tossed him through the hole, making him struggle to retain his footing. Grabbing him by the back of his neck, I signaled to him, Graham’s muffled cries reaching my ears.
“Boys, I’d like you to meet a good friend of mine,” Rocco announced, before I pushed the door shut behind them. I pressed the light switch on the wall and shut my eyes for a second; the lush illumination was too much. Undoing the knot on the scarf around his head, Rocco pressed his elbow into Graham’s chest.
“Say ‘hello’ to my friends, rich boy.”
“Hello,” Graham spoke in a faint voice, his wet, brown locks sticking to his forehead. Sweat was dripping down either side of his neck, his chest rising and falling fast and hard.
“Graham here lived up to his rep tonight,” Rocco said, a sarcastic smile on his face. “When those two girls rang his bell, he went wild. He invited them in right away. I was hiding right behind them.”
