The Good Thief's Guide to Vegas Read Online Free Page A

ticket to London?’
    ‘Devious, moi ?’ She wafted her hand in front of her face and fluttered her eyelids.
    ‘And you’ll quit bugging me if I do?’
    ‘I’ll give you a month’s grace.’
    ‘Done.’ I slapped my fist into my palm, as if I was banging an auction-house gavel. ‘And cheap at the price. You may even find yourself travelling first class.’
    Except she didn’t, and neither did she find herself on a plane to the UK. Because left to my own devices, I went ahead and booked us non-stop to Las Vegas, together with connecting guest rooms at the Fifty-Fifty.
    Now, it will come as no surprise to the more worldly among you that my subterfuge didn’t go down all that well. In fact, it went down about as badly as you could imagine. But unfortunately for Victoria, it wasn’t until I’d hustled her as far as the departure gate at JFK that she rumbled me, and by then she was so stupefied and so enraged that I was able to bundle her onto the plane before she thought better of it.
    A flûte of post-take-off champagne helped to thaw her out, and a good deal of manly pleading persuaded her to talk to me by the second hour of our flight, but now that we were motoring along the Las Vegas Strip, no amount of cajoling could get her to see the humour in my rather weak joke about the Eiffel Tower.
    ‘Listen,’ I said, trying yet again to strike a reasonable note. ‘Surely it’s not the meanest trick in the world. Just think of it as a thank you for all you’ve done for me over the years.’ I placed a hand on her knee. ‘And I did buy you a ticket home for the end of the week.’
    ‘Hmm,’ she said, and folded her arms.
    ‘Is that a “Hmm, yes I forgive you”?’
    ‘No, Charlie. It’s a “Hmm, let’s see how quickly we can change my flight so that I can get away from you before I kill you”.’
    I checked on our cab driver in the rearview mirror. A toothy grin had slashed his face in half.
    ‘At least wait until you see the hotel. Stay a night and see how you feel.’
    ‘I suppose I’m going to have to.’
    ‘So you might as well enjoy yourself, right?’
    ‘Hmm,’ she replied, and turned from me to study the shimmering lake outside the Bellagio. The famous dancing fountains weren’t performing their hourly routine at that particular moment (it would have been too much to ask), but it was an impressive sight all the same.
    ‘We’re almost there. Trust me. You’re going to love it.’
    And do you know what? She actually did. A lot of that had to do with how staggered she was by her first glimpse of the Fifty-Fifty, and her reaction was easy to understand. The main hotel building was a curved fin of smoked glass, fifty storeys in height, that happened to be topped by a revolving restaurant. Above the restaurant, and spinning in counterpoint, was a giant 50-cent piece.
    It was really quite something, as were the Broadway-style marquee bulbs above the main entrance and the vintage American roadsters that gleamed and shimmered in the marble foyer. And it didn’t hurt that the service we received at check-in was impeccable, nor that our junior suites were plenty capable of rendering us speechless.
    Happily enough, things only improved when I treated Victoria to dinner in a kitsch hotel restaurant. The Test Site Trailer was designed to look like the interior of a classic Airstream caravan, with vinyl seating booths, chromium-edged tables and, appropriately enough, a Mushroom Cloud Soda Fountain. Our Atomic Burgers and Fallout Fries had been delivered to our table by a waitress on roller skates, and by the time I’d ordered a second round of boozy Meltdown Milkshakes, I might even go so far as to say that we were on the very best of terms.
    So of course, I chose that moment to spoil it all by telling Victoria how I planned to conclude our evening with a game of no-limit poker.
    ‘Oh, but you mustn’t, Charlie,’ she said, in a surprisingly earnest tone.
    ‘Oh, but I must. This is Vegas, Vic. You