TWENTY-SIX
THE ROLAND ATLANTIC was toward the end of the vast Atlantic City boardwalk. It was an older hotel that had been expanded, given a fresh coat of badly applied stucco, and painted to resemble a birthday cake. The interior décor was also birthday cake with a splash of Easter basket.
Ranger parked in the tentier garage that was attached to the hotel by a pedestrian bridge on the third floor and a covered walkway going directly into the ground-floor casino. He called Jose and Rodriguez and told them to find him in the garage. Minutes later, they parked beside him. Jose and Rodriguez stayed in the garage, and Ranger and I took the elevator and entered the hotel directly into the casino. It was almost noon on a Monday, and the gaming area was packed. Most of the people were senior citizens. More women than men. The younger crowd would come out at night.
The noise from the slots was deafening, the flashing lights were seizure-inducing, and the amount of fat ass hanging over the chairs attached to the slot machines was horrifying. Because smoking was now prohibited, the overriding smell was that of whiskey slopped onto the Pepto-Bismol pink, Gulden’s mustard gold, and poison green carpet.
“Unzipping that body bag didn’t bother me,” Ranger said, “but I’m going to have nightmares over this casino.”
“What are we looking for?”
“Nothing special. I wanted to see the space.”
We moved from the slots to the tables, mentally cataloging exits, making note of the bars and dining areas. We took the escalator to the second-floor lobby. Checkin desk. Concierge station. More slots. Another bar. A restaurant advertising an all-day breakfast buffet and Bingo. The ballroom, conference meeting rooms, and a pedestrian bridge to the conference center were on the mezzanine level. The ballroom was empty of people but filled with round tables and chairs. It was set for a wedding party. White tablecloths with huge pink bows and pink and white artificial flower centerpieces, a two-foot riser with a long decorated table for the bridal party, a smaller round table next to the riser. The smaller table supported a massive wedding cake that was being cooled by a standing fan.
“This is so romantic,” I said to Ranger. “Does it give you ideas?”
He wrapped an arm around me, dragged me close against him, and kissed me on the forehead. “Yes, it gives me ideas, but not about marriage. Mostly about setting fire to this atrocity.”
“It’s not that bad. It’s sort of growing on me.”
What was really growing on me was hunger. I hadn’t had any lunch, and I was ready to kill for a chunk of the wedding cake.
“I want to see the meeting rooms and the conference center,” Ranger said. “And then we need to look at the mechanicals.”
“I’m thinking what we need is the all-day breakfast buffet.”
Ranger glanced at his watch. “You have thirty minutes.”
I went for the good stuff first. Waffles, bacon, sausage, home fries, scrambled eggs, slices of ham, and a sticky bun. Ranger went with fresh fruit and a whole-wheat bagel with smoked salmon.
I cleaned my plate and pushed back from the table.
“You still have ten minutes,” Ranger said.
“I’m stuffed. I can’t eat any more.”
“Then let’s move. I have a lot of ground to cover.”
I tagged after Ranger, up the escalator to the mezzanine. He looked in every meeting room and crossed the bridge to the convention center.
“Why do we need to see all this?” I asked him.
“The trade show opens tomorrow at eight o’clock and ends Thursday at five o’clock. We think Vlatko is going to attempt to kill someone at the trade show. My best chance to catch Vlatko will be when he’s in this building occupied with his assignment. I have blueprints of the building, but I need to see some of the public area for myself.”
“This is a big building. How are you going to find him if he’s in an air duct somewhere?”
“Assassins only crawl around in air ducts in the movies. He’d be making a lot of noise and he wouldn’t fit. And after he dropped the polonium, there’d be the risk of self-contamination if he couldn’t get out fast enough. He’s going to use his disguise to get into a room or to gain access to the air handler that services the room. That’s assuming he’s going with the airborne polonium again.”
“I get the value of polonium at Rangeman. He wanted to infect everyone who worked for you. Why the polonium here? Why doesn’t he just shoot his target?”
“There are advantages to something like polonium. It kills slowly, so there’s not likely to be an immediate investigation. In fact, the death might not even be ruled a homicide. And if polonium is suspected as the agent of death, it sends a terrifying message to whoever else is involved.”
We pushed through the double doors leading to the convention center and walked out into what looked like a food court with slot machines. The food vendors were shuttered. The slot machines were open for business. We took the escalator down to the cavernous first level and saw that hotel employees were setting up partitions and folding tables in numbered stall areas. Cases of booze were being wheeled around on hand trucks and deposited in stalls.
“Hard to believe this room would be involved,” I said to Ranger. “It’s so big. Vlatko would have to have a ton of polonium to do the whole space, and I don’t see how he’d be able to target just one stall.”
“I’ve been told that Gardi carried enough polonium to infect all of Rangeman and everyone in it, if it had been properly disseminated. The total volume of this room plus the second-level food court is more than the total volume of Rangeman, but Vlatko could probably dump enough contaminant into the system to make a lot of people sick.”
“Do you think that’s his goal? To make people sick?”
“No. I think he needs to eliminate someone.”
We left the convention center, and I recognized one of Ranger’s men loafing against the side of the building. He was dressed in tan shorts and a powder blue three-button knit shirt, and he looked like a rhinoceros dressed up for a golf date.
“Clever disguise,” I said to Ranger.
“It gets better. I have a man on every exit, and I think Ramon is wearing a hotdog suit, handing out coupons to Good Dogs.”
We walked the boardwalk to the casino entrance, cruised past more slots, and Ranger steered me to the bank of elevators going to guest rooms.
“I’m told I have a room on the seventh floor,” he said.
“How do you know all this stuff?”