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sure it will
show up.”
    Hanging up, he stared at the photograph of
Michael Dexter, placing that face in the City of Sin. Perhaps there
was a little mischievousness mixed in with those shining eyes.
Yeah, maybe the kid wasn’t so innocent after all. And maybe he
wasn’t all that clever. In less than thirty minutes, he’d already
discovered where the kid was hiding.
     

CHAPTER
4
     
     
    Cynical was headed to Vegas, although
actually getting there without tickets in the wake of a hurricane
presented its own set of challenges. As he waited through layovers
in San Juan, Miami, and Atlanta, he had plenty of time to review
what he knew, even if that wasn’t much. And what little he did know
only begged more questions.
    The dossier Mancuso had provided on Michael
Dexter had been so scrubbed and sanitized it only made the former
LAPD detective more curious. What was the big secret? What had
Michael been working on? Had Mancuso invested in something shady or
illegal? Or was he just embarrassed to have been swindled?
    If Mancuso was such an important client to
Abrams, he was probably a pretty savvy businessman. If that were
true, it would stand to reason that Michael had to be capable of
running a sophisticated scam. If that was the case, why was a slick
conman on the run handing his credit card over to a hotel clerk?
Even a convenience store stick-up-man knew to use cash or a stolen
credit card to make his get-away.
    Vegas made sense though; it was the perfect
place to wash out a paper trail. By converting cash into chips,
then back to cash, Michael could establish a fresh record for the
money. Getting the money back into a bank was another trick, but
there were plenty of reputable institutions that would take cash
without asking too many questions - for a sizeable percentage fee,
of course.
    While he waited at Hartsfield, he made a call
to the Bellagio and reserved the cheapest room they had. Since he
already had them on the phone, he inquired about “Mr. Dexter,” and
wasn’t terribly surprised to learn they didn’t have anyone staying
under that name. He had been lucky once, and once was usually all
you got in Vegas.
    Michael might be staying under an assumed
name or have moved to another hotel. For that matter, he could be
in Canada or Mexico by now. Of course, he might not even have been
the one who had used the credit card in the first place. If he was
a real hustler, he could have paid someone to take the card to
Vegas just to throw a pursuer off the trail.
    If it was just a ruse, he’d fallen for it, or
so he thought, as he looked out the plane window. The Vegas strip
reminded him of a fist full of polished gems scattered against
velvet. While it glistened with an undeniable beauty, the city
itself was an elaborately designed game of misdirection - dazzle
with one hand while the other steals your wallet.
    The city reminded him of his ex, Ilene. At
her insistence, it was where they’d gone to get married. They’d
just been kids and were hopelessly in love or lust or some
combination. That fairy tale hadn’t exactly worked out. In fact,
just like Vegas could do, she had taken him for almost everything
he’d saved up to that point in his life.
    Always one to live on the edge, Cynical
unbuckled his seat belt before the plane had come to a complete
stop. As soon as they were at the terminal, he grabbed his laptop
out of the overhead bin and began maneuvering to the front.
    It was a lost cause to hurry because the
baggage claim set him back an additional thirty minutes. The last
to crawl out from behind the plastic curtain, his black leather bag
dawdled along sheepishly, as if it had stopped to have a beer with
the handlers.
    By the time he rented a car, it was 7:00 pm
Pacific, but felt more like 2:00 am. The hangover and layovers had
caught up with him as he drove down the strip to the Bellagio. He
left the car and a five dollar bill with a very unimpressed valet.
A chirpy young girl at the front desk greeted him