Final Destination: Dead Man's Hand Read online

  PROLOGUE

  Aldis Escobar had a feeling something was seriously wrong the moment he went to get on the elevator; the doors closed on him just as he was stepping inside.

  The rubberized safety bar---the metal strip running down the length of the door, between the car and the floor entrance, that “warned” the elevator if something was stuck in the middle--caught him right down the center, from collar to crotch. Aldis gave out a strangled cry of pain as the bar slammed into his balls, then retracted.

  The doors opened wide, and Aldis stumbled inside, clutching his aching crotch. "M-mother... fucker," he gasped. Just for spite, he kicked the base of the glass back wall of the car. The metal thrummed hollowly from the impact of the size-nine. "Fuck you!" he hissed through gritted teeth, unaware of the spittle falling on the lapels of his jacket. He lashed out with his foot again; this time, he got the window to vibrate.

  The only response the machine gave toward its abuser, however, was to softly chime its bell. The red “down” arrows in the doorframe lit up and the doors closed. Aldis angrily punched the button for the basement, then went back to cupping his hands around his boys, and occasionally moaning. He was going to need an ice bag for his throbbing injury when he got home. Goddamn doors nearly cut me in half, he thought. Piece of shit. Wasn't maintenance supposed to make sure stuff like that didn't happen?

  As the elevator descended, Aldis looked out through the glass walls at the incredible night scene that he knew he'd be able to enjoy a whole lot better were he not in such agonizing pain. Merlin's Tower was the tallest building in Las Vegas-hell, pretty much the tallest building in the entire western United States from what he'd heard, edging out the one hundred and eight storey Stratosphere across the Strip at one thousand two hundred and eight feet, and one hundred and fourteen stories. And the three elevators that ran up and down along tracks on the outside of the hotel/casino provided the best view, day or night, of the neon oasis that stretched out all around it. Of course, it didn't beat the view from The Lady of the Lake, the seafood restaurant on the Tower's roof where Aldis worked as a waiter. From there, you could see all of the city, three hundred and sixty degrees, not just the limited angle you got in the elevators.

  Still, looking down on the lights of the Strip from the glass-walled cars wasn't so bad either, in Aldis's opinion. In particular, there was plenty of Sin City to see from this elevator on the Tower's south side. From here, he could look out at the tents of Circus, Circus, the replica of the Eiffel Tower at the Paris, and far in the distance, the giant pyramid and Sphinx that comprised the Luxor. And even though it was just after four in the morning-the restaurant, as well as a good deal of the gambling metropolis, having closed for the night—there was still light traffic down on Las Vegas Boulevard, and people on the sidewalks. A twenty-four hour town this place was, and Aldis was happy living here. The girls he met were always hot (and most from out of town, so you could screw 'em and then not have to worry about any drama afterward), the rents were okay (if you didn't mind sharing an apartment with two asshole roommates), and the job paid pretty well (if you didn't mind working for assholes).

  All in all, not bad living for a nineteen year-old who'd dropped out of high school in junior year.

  Sure, there were times the work and the city got to him. Not as bad as it did to his old man, but that was his problem and he wasn't going to live here forever. He had dreams of a recording career, of making it big, and they didn't involve either croaking out shitty seventies love ballads on some reality show, like those pussy contestants on American Idol, or opening on the Strip for some over-the-hill hasbeen with groupies old enough to be Aldis's grandmother. No, he'd hooked up with a couple of righteous musicians looking to break out like him: Marco Silfen, a club deejay who could tear it up on a pair of turntables and a mixer, and Ellie Stanfield, a pianist at the Turbo Lounge over on Colorado Avenue. With her on keyboards, Marco on the tables, and Aldis on lead vocals, Trojan (a name he thought reflected their plan to "sneak into the music business) would show the Vegas stiffs how music was done right.

  The dream popping into his thoughts like that did wonders for easing the ache in his nut sack; it even brought a smile to his lips. Yeah, Aldis thought, he wasn't long for this town. With any luck, Trojan would be rolling into L A's club scene before the year was out. A few more practice sessions, and they'd be ready to take the act out on the road.

  Aldis reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his iPod, filled with an eclectic mix of music from J-Kwon to Beethoven (he had a serious liking for Ludwig Van's Ninth Symphony). He unwound the tiny white earphones and put them on, then started running through his latest selection of downloaded tunes.

  Luckily for Aldis, the elevator wasn't stopping on any floor, so he didn't have to worry about annoying hotel guests with the throbbing noise spilling out of the earphones. Then again, he really wasn't supposed to be riding in any of the main cars, even after hours. As an employee of the hotel, it was required he use the service elevator on the north side of the Tower to go to and from the restaurant and the staff locker rooms in the basement. But the service car ran inside the hotel, and the only view it provided was of four metal walls that reminded him of the inside of a dumpster. Not that, you know, he knew what the inside of a dumpster looked like from personal experience.

  Okay, maybe he did. But it only happened once, and there'd been a good reason for it.

  And so what if he used the guest elevators when he got off work? Did he give a shit about upsetting some drunken tourist trying to sneak out a hooker at four in the morning? Oh, hell, no. He had more important things to think about. Aldis Escobar's star was on the rise, baby, and soon enough every motherfucker on the planet would know it. Getting balled out by Joey Congers, the Tower's night manager, for not taking the right elevator when nobody else was making use of it didn't do dick to scare him.

  Speaking of dicks, Aldis suddenly realized his didn't seem to hurt as much anymore. Maybe the music was helping, because he wasn't feeling as much pain as before. He started cautiously moving to the beat, shuffling around the car with his eyes closed. For him, the beat was all there was right now, and the eye-popping view of the Las Vegas night was immediately forgotten...

  ...until the elevator did a little shimmy of its own around the forty-second floor, and momentarily slipped from its tracks.

  The jump threw Aldis against the window behind him, then his attention was focused totally on the street so very far below, especially when the glass popped out of its frame and took a tumble. He screamed as his momentum nearly threw him out of the car. The desert wind tugged at his jacket, like it was trying to force him into a race with the large glass pane to see who hit the pavement first.

  Oddly enough, painfully enough, it was his balls that saved him. They slammed into the waist-high safety railing just as Aldis was about to start his dive, and brought a swift end to his forward motion. Another scream flowed from his wide-open mouth--this one was high-pitched and girlish, like he'd just turned castrato-and he tumbled back into the car. The fetal position his legs drew into was an automatic response to the searing pain now orbiting his pelvis; Aldis wasn't even aware he'd done it.

  Then the elevator was back on its track, continuing its descent like nothing had happened. No alarms had gone off. Security hadn't called on the intercom to find out if anyone was in the car, and Aldis hadn't heard the glass panel hitting the street. Maybe the wind had caught it and carried it a few blocks away; it was certainly high enough up for something like that to occur. But you'd think a piece of glass that big, smashing down anywhere, would get somebody's attention.

  Or maybe he just hadn't heard its
crash. That was possible, because as he tried to gain control of his ragged breathing--and the racking sobs that shook his body-he realized his earphones were still plugged in.

  The music piping into his ears was moody and melodramatic. Normally, Aldis would have tossed it off as typical goth music, shit about death and destruction and the like, but right there, and that moment, it made a weird kind of sense. As he lay on the carpeted floor of the car, using his jacket sleeves to wipe away the tears running down his face, he slowly realized what was going on, as irrational as it sounded the fucking elevator had just tried to kill him.

  Okay, so maybe not the elevator itself-that was just too crazy a notion, even for a guy who couldn't think straight because his nuts felt like they'd swelled up to the size of grapefruits. But something had caused the doors to close, to try and crush him, and something had tried to toss him out of the car, and he didn't think any of it had to do with faulty wiring or the track being out of alignment. It'd never slipped its groove before, as far as he knew.

  Maybe that Grim Reaper stalking-shit had some truth to it.

  Not everyone saw it that way, as he found out a few minutes later. The car had reached the basement without further incident, and Aldis managed to pick himself up off the floor and stagger out of it. Every step had been sheer agony, and he half expected the doors to make one more attempt at playing nutcracker; surprisingly, they hadn't. But then he had the misfortune to run into his shift manager, Tony Augustino, who could be a real ballbuster in his own right.

  "What-so you're the prick who dropped that pane o' glass in the swimming pool?" was his initial response after Aldis told him about his near-death experience in the Elevator from Hell. "Didn't Mr Congers fuckin' tell you not to go ridin' in the fuckin' guest elevators? You're supposed to use the fuckin' service one! How many times you gotta be told that?"

  Augustino was pure old style Vegas-a rumpled old Pisan in his sixties who hailed back to the days when the Mob ran the town. Maybe he used to be somebody, but that was eighty pounds and a natural brown hair color ago. Now he was just a pathetic reflection of the "goodfella" he used to be a lifetime ago-and still thought he was.

  Not that Aldis really gave a shit about that, what with his aching nut sack and his brush with oblivion. He was thrown by the response he got from the old fart-and a little angry. "Wait a minute. You're givin' me shit about what elevator I gotta take, when I'm tellin' you the fuckin' thing almost killed me?”

  "It ain't your job to tell me shit!" Tony snapped. "You're a fuckin' busboy-"

  "Waiter," Aldis corrected him.

  “You're supposed to do what you're told!" Tony concluded, ignoring him.

  "Yeah?” Aldis pointed at the elevator. "And what if one o' the guests had been in it just now, and they'd taken a dive out of the window instead o' me almost takin' it? Would you be tellin' Mr Congers it was their own goddamn fault? You oughtta be thankin' me for findin' out something's wrong with it, not bitin' my fuckin' head off!”

  "Lissen, smartass. You shut that fuckin' mouth of yours, or I'll shut it for you," Tony warned. "I've taken all the shit from you I'm gonna take for one night-we're done." He turned to walk away, stopped, apparently figured he wasn't done just yet, and wheeled back around. He thrust a sausage-like finger in Aldis's face. “And don't think for one fuckin' minute I'm gonna let you put my ass in a sling with Mr Congers 'cause you were joyridin' around in a guest car and went bustin' out a window. 'Cause you know he'll try and make me the fall guy, what with me bein' your supervisor an' all.” He jabbed the finger into his subordinate's chest, hard, like he was trying to poke a hole in it. “But I ain't goin' down alone, All-diss-and you can take that to the motherfuckin' bank.”

  "But what about the elevator?" Aldis asked. "What're you gonna do about that?"

  The index finger levitated up from his chest, back to hovering within inches of his face. "You let maintenance worry about that, busboy," Tony replied. "Just get on your fuckin' knees when you get home tonight, and thank God that window you popped didn't kill somebody, otherwise you'd be talkin' to the cops right about now." He leaned in close, apparently to emphasize his point, but the only things Aldis focused on were Augustino's yellowed teeth. The asshole needed a good flossing. "Want some advice? You should be worried more about keepin' your fuckin' job than fuckin' around where you're not supposed to be, and then expectin' other people to clean up your shit.”

  "Is that a fact?” Aldis said hotly.

  "Yeah, that's a fact. And if you don't like it,” Tony gestured toward a nearby emergency exit door, "you can walk the fuck outta here right now an' don't come back."

  "I got a better idea," Aldis replied with a sneer. "Maybe I'll walk the fuck outta here right now and go straight to Mr Congers. Let him know all about what happened. How you think he's gonna react when I tell him I tried givin' a warnin' about one of the elevators breakin' down, and my supervisor told me to fuck off and mind my own business? You think he's gonna li-"

  Tony's hands closed around his throat before he could finish the sentence. Aldis grunted as he was slammed against the wall. The back of his head bounced off the smooth concrete, the impact sounding like someone striking a ripe melon. Bright little stars and swirling black dots swarmed across his vision.

  "You wanna fuck with me, Escobar?" Tony growled. “I thought you was a smart boy."

  "Smarter than... you... you fuck,” Aldis gasped.

  Tony gave his windpipe a little two-handed shake. "No, you ain't. You're just like any other dumb fuckin' wetback stinkin' up this city, Escobar. And the desert's full o' dumb fuckin' wetbacks who thought they were smarter than guys like me-you get me?”

  "I ain't... a Mexican,” Aldis replied through gritted teeth. He pulled at Augustino's hands. "And how smart's... it make you... when you're doin' time... in prison... for killin' a... waiter?”

  They locked eyes for a moment, then Augustino apparently saw the logic in the young waiter's argument and backed off. He released Aldis, and dropped his hands to his sides. Aldis gasped for air and rubbed his sore throat. Now he had something to take his mind off the ache in his nether regions.

  "You caught a break, Escobar," Tony commented. “That's 'cause I'm such a fuckin' reasonable guy.” Again with the warning finger. “But you crack wise with me again, or you go runnin' your mouth to Mr Congers an' make any trouble, an' you'll be standin' in an unemployment line in a fuckin' wheelchair. Your hear me, busboy?"

  Standin' in a wheelchair? It didn't make a goddamn bit of sense, but Aldis got the gist of the message, and knew that trying to correct Tony's mangled warning would be a real dumbass move. All he wanted to do now was get the fuck out of the hotel. Two close encounters with death were more than enough for one night; best to make tracks before the old saying about the third time being the charm turned out to be for real.

  "Yeah, I hear ya, Tony,” he said. "I got it."

  Augustino placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, like they were pals again. "Good boy. Smart boy. Now, you run on home an' stop your worryin'. I'll give maintenance a call, let 'em know what's what with the elevator. They'll have this whole thing fixed up before Mr Congers even knows it happened." His hand His hand moved around Aldis's shoulders, to roughly draw him into a tight, not so friendly embrace. "But you're gonna stay off the fuckin' guest cars from now on," he growled. “We clear on that, All-diss?"

  Aldis nodded. Anything to wrap this up and get the fuck away from this psycho Godfather reject. "Yeah, Tony. You don't have to tell me twice.”

  Augustino smiled. “Awright, then. So I guess we're all good, as you kids say, right?" He slapped the waiter on the back. Aldis felt his teeth rattle from the impact. “Now, g'wan. I'll see ya tomorrow.”

  Aldiss hurried to his locker without a backward a glance, grabbed his knapsack, and booked out of the hotel basement as quickly as possible, through an exit door that led to the underground parking garage. His hands shook a little as he pulled his car keys from a zip
pered pouch on the front of the bag.

  Fuck it, he thought. Fuck him, fuck this hotel, fuck everything. He rubbed his throat again. Goddamn asshole might've fucked up my voice; coulda cost me my whole fuckin' singin' career. Maybe I oughtta have a doctor look at it...

  As he climbed inside his red Mini Cooper, the nervousness began to fade, replaced by an all-consuming anger. Aldis slammed the driver's side door closed, then sat gripping the wheel in a stranglehold for a few seconds. His lips pulled back in a snarl.

  I don't need to put up with this shit, he decided. Why should I? So, I rode in one of the guest cars-BFD. The damn thing almost killed me, right? That fat old bastard oughtta be grateful I gave him the heads-up. But does he act grateful? Oh, hell, no. He tries to snap my fuckin' neck, and tells me to keep my mouth shut!

  He keyed the ignition, stomped on the gas pedal, and tore out of the garage, onto Paradise Road, heading south. The first pink glimmers of sunrise were coloring the east, but Aldis was in no mood to admire the view as he stopped at the red light on the corner of Sahara Avenue.

  Maybe I'll talk to Marco and Ellie later, he thought. See if there's any openings where they work. I don't need to take that psycho shit from Augustino anymore. And if that elevator acts up again and tries to kill some other poor bastard... well, I tried to warn them, right? Not my fault if Tony fuckin' Augustino wants to keep it a secret. Let 'im take it to his fuckin' grave, for all I care.

  Aldis was so caught up in his internal monologue, so focused on making plans for when he showed up for his shift that night, when he'd tell Augustino to go screw himself and then walk out of the Tower forever, that he never saw the van racing across Sahara Avenue as its driver tried to beat the changing traffic signal; didn't notice the driver lose control of the vehicle, and send it hurtling across the lanes right at him-until it was too late to get out of the way.

  The van hopped the curb, spun in the air once, twice, long enough for Aldis to see the terrified expressions of the teenaged driver behind and the girl who sat beside him, and then it slammed down on the roof of the Mini Cooper.