The Good Thief's Guide to Vegas Read Online Free

France (by which I mean that I was told to get out and never return), and at the time of my departure I happened to be holding some merchandise of a somewhat dubious provenance. Now, there aren’t too many markets for the type of goods I had hidden in my luggage, but I knew of a dealer in Brooklyn who might be inclined to take a look. And by coincidence, Victoria had recently agreed to represent an author based in New York, whom she was keen to shake the hand of, following what she’d taken to referring to as my deception . So, in short, we had come to America. And after I’d sold my wares for a respectable profit, and Victoria had glumly confirmed that her latest scribe was indeed the mirror image of his rather unfortunate mug-shot, I’d suggested that we might be entitled to a little fun. And fun, to me, meant Vegas.
    In all honesty, persuading Victoria to come to Sin City had been far trickier than I could have anticipated. To begin with, she’d given me a flat-out refusal, insisting that she needed to return to London for the sake of her clients. Then she’d told me that she couldn’t afford a vacation.
    ‘Piffle,’ I told her – largely because it was a word I’d always wanted to use. ‘You deserve a break. I can’t even remember the last time you took a holiday.’
    ‘Try a few days ago. In Paris.’
    ‘Piffle,’ I replied – because I really felt like I’d mastered the use by now. ‘You can’t call that a holiday. It was a business trip, of a kind, followed by an adventure, of a sort, and not a vacation by any stretch of the imagination.’
    Victoria closed her eyes and drew an audible breath. Then she told me, in a caustic tone, that if I said ‘piffle’ once more, she’d be forced to cause me some damage of a rather unfortunate and testicular nature. And she added, quite calmly, that she positively didn’t gamble. That it was, in fact, a Newbury family rule never to bet on anything.
    ‘Not gamble?’ I said, as if she was mad. ‘Are you a Mormon?’ And believe me, I was careful to pronounce the second ‘m’ very clearly.
    ‘No, Charlie. I’m just a responsible adult. And anyway, what would I wager? I’m hardly going to fritter away the less than jaw-dropping commission I earn on your books.’
    ‘I’ll stump you. I have more than a fistful of dollars from my Brooklyn contact. By rights, half of it’s yours anyway.’
    ‘Then buy me a ticket home.’
    ‘But Vegas will be fun, Vic. You could do with a little frivolity in your life.’
    ‘Oh believe me, seeing all those Charlie Howard fees pile up in my bank account makes me quite giddy enough.’
    Her little barb caused my jaw to drop, and once it had struck my kneecap, I uttered what can best be described as a gasp. ‘Sometimes, I think it’s lucky for you that I’m not precious about my writing.’
    ‘Not precious? Or not serious?’
    ‘Ouch.’
    ‘All I’m saying is that it’s been more than a year since you’ve given me anything new. And from what I can gather, your latest Faulks novel has hit the buffers.’
    ‘Not true. It’s just that the Cuban section’s proving a little tricky to develop. But give it time and it’ll come together.’
    ‘Time? Well, if you spent half as much time at your desk as you do breaking into people’s homes, it might be finished already.’
    I twirled a finger at my temple. ‘My subconscious has been toiling away like you wouldn’t believe.’
    ‘Yes, but it’s your conscious I’m worried about. That’s the part that does the actual typing. Can’t you at least pull together a short story? Something I might be able to place in an anthology? We do need to keep your name out there.’
    I paused for a moment and tried to gauge the turn our conversation had taken, my grey cells running through all kinds of complex and intricate thoughts.
    ‘I don’t mean to sound like a conspiracy nut here, Vic, but are you just nagging me in the hope I’ll become so annoyed that I buy you a