The Scam (22 page)

“Nobody can hide from dem,” Alika said. “They'd find you if you jumped in a time machine to da future, took a spaceship to a-nudder planet, an hid in a-nudder dimension. An den dey would cut out yo guts, string you up wit' dem, an' set you on fire.”

“I'd like to see that,” Boyd said.

“Trace will die dead, bruddah,” Alika said. “Guaranteed.”

T
here's always a surgical conference going on somewhere in Las Vegas and usually it's at one of the major casino resorts. The conferences are sponsored by medical device manufacturers in order to train doctors in the use of their latest high-priced surgical tools and implants. The hope is that those surgeons will then want to use those products, which would force hospitals to buy them. So there's a constant demand on the Strip for cadavers.

One of the companies that served the cadaver need was CorpsSource Services, Inc., which was located in a nondescript building in an office park near McCarran International Airport. Nick drove up to the front door in his 2006 Chevy Cobalt at 11 
P.M.
, two days after Boyd's meeting with Alika. The only other vehicles in the lot were the two refrigerated trucks that CorpsSource used for hauling bodies.

“It looks dead to me. There isn't a living soul in sight,” Nick said to Kate and Willie, who were also in the Chevy. The three of them wore white CorpsSource-logo jumpsuits. Willie's jumpsuit was too tight and unzipped to show off her cleavage, purely out of habit, not necessity.

“That's not funny,” Willie said. “This whole thing creeps me out.”

“All you have to do is hot-wire the truck,” Nick said. “If you stay in the cab, you'll never see the body. Kate and I will do the rest.”

“At least we're not in a cemetery,” Willie said.

“That would be grave robbing, and I wouldn't do that,” Nick said. “It would be desecration.”

“How's this any different?” Willie asked.

“These people willed their bodies to science,” Nick said.

“This isn't science,” Kate said.

“It's criminal science,” Nick said, and got out of the car.

The women got out, too.

“I'm sure that wasn't the science they had in mind when they made out their wills,” Kate said, walking with Nick to the front door while Willie headed for the trucks.

“I'm thinking they no longer care,” Nick said.

“Doesn't matter,” Kate said. “We're all going straight to hell.”

Nick took out a pair of lock picks and opened the door as easily as if he had the key. They stepped into the lobby, and Nick typed a code into the security keypad by the door, deactivating the alarm.

“How did you get the code?” Kate asked.

“I showed up yesterday, posing as a rep for a medical device company, at the same time the office manager arrived here to open up,” Nick said. “I saw her punch in the code, and she was even kind enough to give me a complete tour.”

Kate went around the receptionist's counter and opened cupboards until she found the DVR unit for the security cameras. She gave it a quick examination. “We're in luck. It doesn't back up to the Web.”

“I've seen cookie jars with better security,” Nick said.

Kate unplugged the cables going into the DVR, took it out of the cabinet, and lugged it away under one arm. The two of them walked through the front office and down a corridor to the cold storage room. They opened the heavy steel door, pushed aside the clear vinyl strip curtain flaps, and stepped inside what was essentially a very large walk-in freezer. Dozens of cadavers in black body bags were stacked on four long aisles of shelving units that looked like bunk beds. Nick grabbed one of the gurneys that lined the far wall and wheeled it down the first aisle, as if he were shopping at Costco. Kate put the DVR on another gurney and followed him.

Each body bag had a card in a clear plastic sleeve that listed the sex, age, and cause of death of its cadaver. There was also a bar code and some serial numbers. Nick and Kate each took one side of the aisle, checking out the cards on the body bags.

Female, 87, congenital heart disease. Male, 66, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Male, 83, lung cancer. Female, 72, kidney failure.

“There are a lot of old people here,” Kate said.

“That's the nature of the business, especially in a retirement community like Las Vegas. Here's a possibility. Male, forty-two, massive body trauma.” Nick unzipped the bag and immediately reared back. “Holy crap. He's flattened. That won't work.”

“Why do they have a body like that here? Don't they prefer them in relatively good shape?”

“Most of the time,” Nick said, zipping up the bag. “But they also need bodies for trauma surgery training.”

They continued down the aisle and on to the next one, going from body to body. Kate found another contender.

“Male, thirty-eight, heart attack,” she said.

Kate unzipped the bag and Nick came over to take a look. The dead man was about five foot five and 250 pounds.

“He won't work,” Nick said.

They needed someone Nick's size. Kate zipped it back up and moved to the next bag. And then the one after that. And several more. They were down to the last row of the last aisle before Nick found another possible selection.

“This sounds promising. Male, thirty-eight, cerebral hemorrhage.”

He unzipped the bag. The dead man was Hispanic, but roughly Nick's height and weight.

“What do you think?” Nick asked.

She gave the cadaver a quick appraisal. “He'll do.”

Nick zipped up the bag and together they picked up the body, set it on the gurney, and strapped it in place. Kate put the DVR on top of the body and they wheeled the gurney out of the storage room, closed the door, and hurried to the loading dock. They lifted the slide-up garage door to find the refrigerated truck already backed up to the loading dock with the engine running.

Kate opened the heavy door to the truck's freezer-like cargo area and pushed aside the plastic strip curtains that kept the cold air inside. Nick wheeled in the gurney. The truck's interior was lined with shelves and belts to secure the body bags to them. Kate set the DVR on the truck's floor, then she and Nick lifted the body bag onto one of the shelves and strapped it in. Nick collapsed the gurney so it was flat on the floor and slid it into place under a shelf.

“This is the first time I've ever stolen a body,” Nick said.

“That's not true. You stole a mummy from a museum in London.”

“I stole a sarcophagus that had a mummy inside.”

“So now you're stealing a body bag that has a cadaver inside,” Kate said. “I don't see the difference.”

“The difference is the thirty million dollars in jewel-encrusted antiquities that were in the sarcophagus with the mummy.”

“Do you still have the antiquities?”

“I didn't keep any of it. The sarcophagus had been looted from an ancient burial site,” Nick said. “I returned it to the rightful owner, the Egyptian government, for a handsome retrieval fee. Besides, the antiquities would have clashed with my Rembrandts.”

“I hate when that happens,” she said.

They got out and closed the door. Kate joined Willie in the truck's cab and Nick dashed across the parking lot to the Chevy Cobalt. Nick drove off first, and then Willie pulled out and followed Nick toward the glow of the Vegas strip.

“I really hope the slogan is true,” Willie said.

“ ‘No freakin' gondolas'?”

“What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”

It was almost midnight when Willie, Nick, and Kate pulled into a warehouse in an industrial pocket of buildings on the south side of the Côte d'Argent casino. It was close enough to the resort to fall under the black tower's shadow for several hours each day. Willie drove the refrigerator truck into the warehouse, and Nick quickly closed the door behind her. She parked the truck but kept the refrigeration unit running.

Willie and Kate got out of the truck and went to check on the rest of the crew, who were finishing up last-minute details of the con.

Chet Kershaw was applying touch-up paint to the exterior of the black Audi A8 to hide traces of some of his special effects handiwork. Kate leaned in close to the car and examined the finish.

“They're nearly invisible,” she said. “It looks like you've just touched up some parking lot dings.”

“When these little charges blow, they'll leave M16 impact marks and gunpowder residue behind. Even the crime scene techs will be fooled,” Chet said.

“That's above and beyond,” Kate said.

“Not the way I look at it,” Chet said. “The CSI guys are part of the audience, too. They're just coming late to the show.”

Kate moved along to Tom, who was also busy painting, putting the final touches on a Styrofoam replica of a sidewalk manhole cover. He had a genuine manhole cover on the table, next to the fake, that he was using for reference.

“They look identical,” Kate said, glancing between the two covers. “I can't tell the difference.”

“You'd know right away if you tried to drop through that one,” Tom knocked his knuckle against the real cover. “You'd break your feet.”

She turned to Boyd, who stood nearby, trying on a vest made up of pouches filled with red-dyed corn syrup. Each pouch had a wire taped to the outside that ran down to a battery pack on his hip.

“This brings back memories,” he said, adjusting the Velcro straps on the vest. “I wore one of these in my starring role in
Taken 3.
”

“I don't remember seeing you in that movie,” Tom said. “Who did you play?”

“Thug number twenty-seven,” Boyd said. “I was shot five times by Liam Neeson, but most of my performance was lost due to the director's terrible staging.”

“In other words,” Kate said, “the camera was on Neeson instead of you.”

“The man is a camera hog,” Boyd said. “Everybody in the business knows that. He robbed the audience of my indelible performance.”

“That won't be an issue tomorrow,” Kate said. “I guarantee you'll have everyone's attention.”

“But it won't be on camera,” Boyd said. “From my professional prospective it's unfortunate that we have to come at the casino from angles that will obscure our faces from security cameras.”

“Not unless you'd like to be doing dinner theater in a prison cafeteria for the next five to ten years.”

“The long run and captive audience is appealing to me,” Boyd said. “But the venue leaves a lot to be desired.”

Kate moved on to Jake, who was cleaning an M16, one of a half dozen rifles laid out on a table in front of him.

“That's more weapons than we're going to need,” Kate said.

“You can never have too many weapons,” Jake said.

“Does that mean you brought your rocket launcher?”

“It's in the trunk of my car in case of a roadside emergency.”

“What kind of roadside emergency would require a rocket launcher?” she asked.

“You don't want to find out and not have one handy,” Jake said. “It's also why you should always have a paper clip in your pocket. You can do just about anything with a paper clip.”

She gave her dad a kiss on the cheek. “Don't ever change.”

“That's a given,” Jake said.

Willie popped the hood on a beige panel van parked behind them and examined the engine. Kate joined Willie at the front of the van.

“What are you looking for?” Kate asked.

“I'm checking the belts, fluids, and plugs one more time. I'd hate to have this barge crap out on me when we need to make our fast getaway. I don't see why we couldn't use a Mercedes G500 AMG or a 7 Series BMW 760Li M Sport instead.”

“Because we wanted a vehicle that would blend in,” Kate said. “Not stand out.”

“When Boyd, Chet, and Jake start shooting from the van with M16s, we're going to stand out anyway,” Willie said. “We might as well be cradled in soft, Veneto Beige Nappa leather with a raging V-12 twin turbo under the hood when we do the drive-by.”

“Look at the upside,” Kate said. “You get to drive recklessly at blazing speed through gunfire and flames.”

“That
is
my favorite kind of driving,” she said. “But it goes much better with a sexy ride.”