By 10PM everyone in Las Vegas was gambling in the casinos or sleeping under TV's warm glow. The rear lot of the Desert Winds Inn was deserted, as the Mustang parked amongst the out-of-state cars. Sean and Driscoll got out of the car and walked to the back entrance, where the ex-cop opened the stairwell door, saying, "This is the place.”
“Here?”
“No, one flight up. The old man doesn't take elevators. No one uses these stairs. No closed-circuit camera either.”
Driscoll screwed a long silencer onto plastic-gripped .357 revolver. “The casino security is too interested in catching skimmers and card-counters to worry about some stupid stairs. When you see him, stick the gun about three inches from the back of his head and pull the trigger. The silencer will make it real quiet. He drops to the ground and you steal his wallet, and then meet me outside. One more thing, don't stick the gun into the back of his neck, because he could whip around and you'd have a fight with an old man on your hands. You got it?"
"Yeah." Sean listlessly accepted the revolver and Driscoll tapped the stairwell's window. "I'll be watching from out here."
“What if___” Sean turned on Driscoll.
"Does 409 Seaview Road mean anything to you?” Driscoll beat him to the punch. “Mom and Dad Land, right? You hit me and Frank will take out your Wonderbread family in Boston. You got that, Seano?"
Sean lowered the gun to his side and Driscoll shoved him inside the stairwell.
"It'll be over before you know it, Seano." Driscoll left him to climb the stairs.
Sean's knees buckled on the second-floor landing and he leaned against the concrete wall for support. His killing someone was an act which hundreds of all around the world committed everyday in scores of different ways, yet this collective globalism didn't slow his heart’s non-stop tattoo and he realized he wasn't killing any stranger, not for money or the threat of death.
The ex-cop was expecting a free show and Sean was fully intent on giving him one. His finger hooked around the trigger and he pressed the cold steel circle of the silencer's extended barrel to his temple. The suicidal twist of the killer killing himself would screw up Driscoll's and deRocco's plans, yet he couldn't gut up the nerve to find out waited behind death. His life was precious. Another man's existence was unimportant.
A man was slowly climbing the stairs. It had to be his victim. Sean lowered the muzzle from his skull and aimed the revolver where his target's head would appear.
Two seconds later the old man from the photo stepped into the gun’s sights.
Sean's index finger tightened on the steel.
A little more pressure and the trigger would flick the hammer down onto the bullet.
Sean stopped breathing, as the old man's brown eyes focused on him rather than the silencer's black hole.
"You don't look like a murderer." The old man calmly arched his left eyebrow.
"And what does a killer look like?" Sean's finger stalled on the trigger.
"Like he's killed more than once," the old man stated matter-of-factly without fear.
"You want to bet?" Sean centered the red-dotted gunsight on his victim's forehead.
"I'm already gambling."
"Then you lose, cause I have to kill you."
"Nobody has to do anything they don't want to, but if you 'got' to, then do it already. In the meanwhile I'm going to close my eyes, because I don't want to watch."
The old man's wrinkled lids shut, signaling that he was resigned to either of his assassin’s options.
Sean would have done the same and this situational synchonicity forged an unforeseen link between the two.
The old man opened his eyes.
"See, you don't have a killer inside you."
"Maybe not, but someone in the parking lot does and he'll kill us both now, if I don't kill you."
The old man lifted his hands higher and contorted his creased face into a parodied plea for mercy.
"You ever play 'Cops and Robbers', when you were a kid?"
"Yeah,” Sean replied, although coming from the suburbs he was more into ‘cowboys and Indians’.
"Then we fake this killing."
"Fake it?"
"Yes, you pull the trigger. I fall down like I've been shot. You walk out. I lay low for a couple of weeks. You get lost. No one gets hurt. How's that sound for a plan?"
"Like one I'd make up?" Sean told himself, though the only question was whether he could trust this stranger. He had no other choice and he pulled the trigger.
The silencer reduced the explosion to a metallic spit.
The revolver recoiled up and away.
The old man slammed against the wall and slumped heavily to the floor.
Bitter cordite fumes snaked into Sean's nostrils, and he knelt to rifle the pants' pockets for the wallet.
Standing up Sean pulled the trigger. The second shot seemed quieter than the first and he leapfrogged down the stairs two at a time, while clumsily sticking the gun into his jacket.
Reaching the Mustang he jumped inside and slammed the door shut.
"Where's the piece?" Driscoll demanded, as the car squealed from the parking lot to merge with the 25mph traffic on Fremont.
Sean grabbed the gun inside his jacket and his fingers dipped into the busted ketchup packet among the cold French fries he had stashed earlier.
"Here." He handed the gun to the ex-cop, who spotted the red stain on Sean's hand.
"First blood, Seano. Way to go. But get rid of it, cause blood is evidence."
"Sure." Sean wiped off the red condiment with the paper towel.
"So what'd the old man say?" Driscoll licked his lips like a lizard on concaine.
"He begged for his life." Sean half-expected the cop to high-five him.
"A lot of them do that." Driscoll had been deaf to his share of plea for mercy. "Frank would be real proud of you. Not for nothin', but you came through like a pro. Showed no mercy. Where’s the wallet?”
"I have it." Sean flipped the ex-cop the stolen wallet.
"A stone-cold killer." Driscoll checked the IDs. "Damnit, you got the right guy too. You'd be surprised how many killers screw that up. We're out of here, Seano."
The Mustang broke free of traffic and the two men rode in silence past the futuristic casino's fluorescent facades.
Crossing Tropicana Wash's dry riverbed south out of town Sean reflected on this evening's miracle and lifted his eyes to the millions of stars overhead. He was up $10,000 and hadn't killed anyone. Tomorrow he would be in California and fly to Panama. Once Driscoll and deRocco discovered how he had fooled them, they would be pissed, but would never find him on the San Blas Archipelago.
Some god in the stars had to like him and Sean dispatched his prayers to a nameless and faceless entity for fear of angering the one he didn't choose, and then sat back, his body relaxed with his new freedom, laughing inside, for he should have had more trust in his luck, but then everyone should when they can't count on anything else.
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