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tucked into his mouth would help fool the facial recognition cameras. (They weren’t as good as advertised, but why take a chance?) Landry melted into the crowd and played the slots, watching the check-in counter and hoping for a rush. He sat on a stool and pulled the one-armed bandit, the clanging bells filling his ears. Cigarette smoke made his eyes smart. He didn’t approve of places that let people smoke, but this was Las Vegas and smoking was ubiquitous. It went with the buckets of quarters and the buses full of elderly women in pantsuits and old men with cigarette packs in the breast pockets of their knit shirts, with the constant harmonic ringing in his ears and the clank and spill of quarters into the coin trays when someone hit the jackpot. He’d have to spend a lot more time here to succumb to secondhand smoke, so it was just an annoyance. Once he got a nonsmoking room he would change clothes, and that would take care of the problem. A former Navy SEAL, he knew there were several levels of bad beyond annoyance. Unbearable, for instance. His comfort meter had made it to the red line many times when he was in Iraq. So breathing secondhand smoke and the constant din of the slots was really nothing, when you looked at it as part of a continuum.
    He played the slots for a while, melting into the crowd. Xanadu wasn’t that old, but already it was showing what age it had. The smell of cigarette smoke had embedded into the carpet and the walls, and there was a dankness underneath that he’d noticed in casinos—a night-worn smell. He had been raised Catholic but it didn’t take. He’d had enough inculcation to remember those formative years, and he thought the casino smelled like sin—if sin had a smell. Venial sin, for sure. It was a minor, sad stink.
    Landry had chosen Xanadu because it appealed to an older crowd. In the last few years, Las Vegas had been turned into a playground for twentysomethings. Landry wanted a place where he could fit in. College kids seemed to give Xanadu a wide berth, leaving it to the jaded gamblers and senior citizens.
    Still, Xanadu went big. It had been built during the days Las Vegas tried to attract families instead of reprobates. One wall was all waterfall, with fake rock, colored lights, what looked like real moss, and lifelike caged tigers and real actors—natives with spears. It smelled fishy, though, and the men in the loincloths looked like they didn’t know what to do with their spears. The woman on the trapeze was a marvel of female construction, but all she did was swing back and forth in her leopard swimsuit.
    Landry knew he fit in. The trick was in the eyes. He always focused on the slot machine—never wavering. He wore the wire-rimmed glasses. In addition, he’d attached a fake ponytail he liked to carry with him, which along with the Hawaiian shirt and the wire-rims made him look like a hippie professor on a junket.
    There were cameras everywhere. But the best protective coloring here was the sheer number of people packed like sardines into the hotel-casino.
    He saw a crowd of tourists coming in. It looked like they had been on a bus all day. He fell into line with them.
    That was when he spotted the call girl.
    She was good looking for a prostitute. She was also older than a lot of the prostitutes around here, possibly late twenties. Leggy. Sure of herself.
    He liked that. Everyone had something they could do well, and she gave off the vibe that she was quite likely a spectacular prostitute.
    Yes, she dressed like a hooker, but she was a stylish hooker. To be fair, his daughter Kristal didn’t dress all that differently.
    For a moment, the slide show came up: Kristal frantically trying to squeeze under her cute little car, Luke shielding her with his body.
    That kid, Luke—he was a warrior. The one and only time in his life, probably, but he’d died brave.
    The prostitute smiled at him. The image of Kristal spattered with her boyfriend’s blood dissolved. He had