“Why’s that?”
“Too old. She’s a nice-lookin’ gal, but she was too old for Tony. He liked ’em young.”
Bosch nodded and let him go. He then wandered through the casino in a quandary. He didn’t know what to do about Eleanor Wish. He was intrigued by what she was doing and King’s explanation about her being a once-a-week regular seemed to make her recognition of Aliso innocent enough. But while she most likely had nothing to do with the case, Bosch felt the desire to talk to her. To tell her he was sorry for the way things had turned out, for the way he had made them turn out.
He saw a bank of pay phones near the front desk and used one to call information. He asked for a listing for Eleanor Wish and got a recording saying the phone number was unlisted at the customer’s request. Bosch thought a moment and then dug through the pocket of his jacket. He found the card that Felton, the Metro detectives captain, had given him and paged him. He waited with his hand on the phone so no one else could use it for four minutes before it rang.
“Felton?”
“Yeah, who’s this?”
“Bosch. From earlier today?”
“Right. L.A. I still haven’t gotten the prints back. I’m expecting to hear something first thing.”
“No, I’m not calling about that. I was wondering if you or any of your people have enough juice with the phone company to get me a listing, number and address.”
“It’s unlisted?”
Bosch felt like telling him that he wouldn’t be calling if the account was listed but let it go.
“Yeah, unlisted.”
“Who is it?”
“A local. Somebody who was playing poker with Tony Aliso on Friday night.”
“So?”
“So, Captain, they knew each other and I want to talk to her. If you can’t help me, fine. I’ll find her some other way. I was calling because you told me to call if I needed something. This is what I need. Can you do it or not?”
There was silence for a few moments before Felton came back.
“Okay, give it to me. I’ll see what I can get. Where you going to be?”
“I’m mobile. Can I ring you back?”
Felton gave him his home number and told him to call back in a half hour.
Bosch used the time to walk across the Strip to Harrah’s to check out the poker room. Eleanor Wish wasn’t there. He then went back out onto the Strip and headed down to the Flamingo. He took his jacket off because it was still very warm out. It would be dark soon and he hoped it would cool off then.
In the Flamingo casino he found her. She was playing at a one-to-four table with five men. The seat on her left was open but Bosch didn’t take it. Instead, he hung back with the crowd around a roulette table and watched her.
Eleanor Wish’s face showed total concentration on the cards as she played. Bosch watched as the men she was playing against stole looks at her, and it gave Bosch a weird thrill to know they secretly coveted her. In the ten minutes he watched, she won one hand— he was too far away to see what she won with— and bailed out early on five others. It looked as though she was well ahead. She had a full rack in front of her and six stacks of chips on the blue felt.
After he watched her win a second hand— this time a massive pot— and the dealer began to push the pile of blue chips to her spot, Bosch looked around for a pay phone. He called Felton at home and got Wish’s home phone and address. The captain told him that the address, on Sands Avenue, was not far off the strip in an area of apartment buildings mostly inhabited by casino employees. Bosch didn’t tell him that he had already found her. Instead, he thanked him and hung up.
When Bosch got back to the poker room she was gone. The five men were still there, but there was a new dealer and no Eleanor Wish. Her chips were gone. She had cashed out and he had lost her. Bosch cursed to himself.
“You looking for someone?”
Bosch turned around. It was Eleanor. There was no smile on her face, just a slight look of irritation or maybe defiance. His eyes fell to the small white scar on her jawline.
“I, uh . . . Eleanor . . . yeah, I was looking for you.”
“You were always so obvious. I picked you out one minute after you were there. I would’ve gotten up then but I was bringing that guy from Kansas along. He thought he knew when I was bluffing. He didn’t know shit. Just like you.”
Bosch was tongue-tied. This was not how he had envisioned this happening and he didn’t know how to proceed.
“Look, Eleanor, I, uh, just wanted to see how you were doing. I don’t know, I just . . .”
“Right. So you just flew out to Vegas to look me up? What’s going on, Bosch?”
Bosch looked around. They were standing in a crowded section of the casino. Players passing on both sides of them, the cacophony of the slot machine din and whoops of success and failure created a blur of sight and sound around him.
“I’ll tell you. Do you want to get a drink or something, maybe something to eat?”
“One drink.”
“You know a place that’s quiet?”
“Not here. Follow me.”
They left through the front doors of the casino and walked out into the dry heat of the night. The sun was all the way down now and it was neon that lit the sky.
“There’s a bar in Caesar’s that’s quiet. It doesn’t have any machines.”
She led him across the street and onto the people mover that delivered them to the front door of Caesar’s Palace. They walked past the front desk and into a circular bar where there were only three other customers. Eleanor had been right. It was an oasis with no poker or slot machines. Just the bar. He ordered a beer and she ordered scotch and water. She lit a cigarette.
“You didn’t used to smoke before,” he said. “In fact, I remember you were—”
“That was a long time ago. Why are you here?”
“I’m on a case.”
During the walk over he’d had time to compose himself and put his thoughts in order.
“What case and what does it have to do with me?”
“It’s got nothing to do with you, but you knew the guy. You played poker with him on Friday at the Mirage.”
Curiosity and confusion creased her brow. Bosch remembered how she used to do that and remembered how attractive he’d found it. He wanted to reach over and touch her but he didn’t. He had to remind himself that she was different now.
“Anthony Aliso,” he said.
He watched the surprise play on her face and believed instantly that it was real. He wasn’t a poker player from Kansas who couldn’t read a bluff. He had known this woman and believed from the look on her face she clearly did not know Aliso was dead until he told her.
“Tony A . . . ,” she said and then let it trail off.
“Did you know him well or just to play against?”
She had a distant look in her dark eyes.
“Just when I’d see him there. At the Mirage. I’ve been playing there on Fridays. A lot of fresh money and faces come in. I’d see him there a couple times a month. For a while I thought he was a local, too.”
“How’d you find out he wasn’t?”
“He told me. We had a drink together a couple months ago. There were no seats at the tables. We put our names in and told Frank, he’s the night man, to come get us at the bar when there was an opening. So we had a drink and that’s when he told me he was from L.A. He said he was in the movie business.”
“That’s it, nothing else?”
“Well, yeah, he said other things. We talked. Nothing that stands out, though. We were passing the time until one of our names came up.”
“You didn’t see him again outside of playing?”
“No, and what’s it to you? Are you saying I’m a suspect because I had a drink with the guy?”
“No, I’m not saying that, Eleanor. Not at all.”
Bosch got out his own cigarettes and lit one. The waitress in a white-and-gold toga brought their drinks, and
they settled into a silence for a long moment. Bosch had lost his momentum. He was back to not knowing what to say.
“Looked like you were doing pretty good tonight,” he tried.
“Better than most nights. I got my quota and I got out.”
“Quota?”
“Whenever I get two hundred up I cash out. I’m not greedy and I know luck doesn’t last for long on any given night. I never lose more than a hundred, and if I’m lucky enough to get two hundred ahead, then I’m done for the night. I got there early tonight.”
“How’d you—”
He stopped himself. He knew the answer.
“How’d I learn to play poker well enough to live off it? You spend three and a half years inside and you learn to smoke and play poker and other things.”
She looked directly at him as if daring him to say anything about it. After another long moment she broke away and got out another cigarette. Bosch lit it for her.
“So there’s no day job? Just the poker?”
“That’s right. I’ve been doing this almost a year now. Kind of hard to find a straight job, Bosch. You tell ’em you’re a former FBI agent and their eyes light up. Then you tell them you just got out of federal prison and they go dead.”
“I’m sorry, Eleanor.”
“Don’t be. I’m not complaining. I make more than enough to get by, every now and then I meet interesting people like your guy Tony A., and there’s no state income tax here. What do I have to complain about, except maybe that it gets to be over a hundred degrees in the shade about ninety times a year too many?”
The bitterness was not lost on him.
“I mean I’m sorry about everything. I know it doesn’t do you any good now, but I wish I had it to do all over again. I’ve learned things since then, and I would’ve played it all differently. That’s all I wanted to tell you. I saw you on the surveillance tape playing with Tony Aliso and I wanted to find you to tell you that. That’s all I wanted.”
She stubbed her half-finished smoke out in the glass ashtray and took a strong pull on her glass of scotch.
“I guess I should be going, then,” she said.
She stood up.
“Do you need a ride anywhere?”
“No, I actually have a car, thank you.”
She started out of the bar in the direction of the front doors but after a few yards stopped and came back to the table.
“You’re right, you know.”
“About what?”
“About it not doing me any good now.”
With that she left. Bosch watched her push through the revolving doors and disappear into the night.
Following the directions he had written down when he spoke with Rhonda over the phone in Tony Aliso’s office, Bosch found Dolly’s on Madison in North Las Vegas. It was strictly an upper-crust club: twenty-dollar cover, two-drink minimum and you were escorted to your seat by a large man in a tuxedo with a starched collar that cut into his neck like a garrote. The dancers were upper-crust, too. Young and beautiful, they probably were just shy of having enough coordination and talent to work the big-room shows on the Strip.
Bosch was led by the tuxedo to a table the size of a dinner plate about eight feet from the main stage, which was empty at the moment.
“A new dancer will be on stage in a couple minutes,” the man in the tuxedo told Bosch. “Enjoy the show.”
Bosch didn’t know if he was supposed to tip the guy for seating him at such a close-up location as well as putting up with the tuxedo, but he let it go and the man didn’t hang around with his hand out. Bosch had barely gotten his cigarettes out when a waitress in a red silk negligee, high heels and black fishnet stockings floated over and reminded him of the two-drink minimum. Bosch ordered beer.
While he waited for his two beers, Bosch took a look around. Business seemed slow, it being the Monday night tail-end of a holiday weekend. There were maybe twenty men in the place. Most of them were sitting by themselves and not looking at each other while they waited for the next nude woman to entertain them.
There were full-length mirrors on the side and rear walls. A bar ran along the left side of the room, and cut into the wall in the back was an arched entrance above which a red neon sign that glowed in the darkness announced PRIVATE DANCERS. The front wall was largely taken up by a shimmering curtain and the stage. A runway projected from the stage through the center of the room. The runway was the focus of several bright lights attached to a metal gridwork on the ceiling. Their brightness made the runway almost glow in contrast to the dark and smoky atmosphere of the seating area.
A disk jockey in a sound booth at the left side of the stage announced the next dancer would be Randy. An old Eddie Money song, “Two Tickets to Paradise,” started blaring over the sound system as a tall brunette wearing blue jeans cut off to expose the lower half of her bottom and a neon pink bikini top charged through the shimmering curtain and started moving to the beat of the music.
Bosch was immediately mesmerized. The woman was beautiful and the first thought he had was to question why she was doing this. He had always believed that beauty helped women get away from many of the hardships of life. This woman, this girl, was beautiful and yet here she was. Maybe that was the real draw for these men, he thought. Not the glimpse of a naked woman, but the knowledge of submission, the thrill of knowing another one had been broken. Bosch began to think he had been wrong about beautiful women.
The waitress put down two beers on the little table and told Bosch he owed fifteen dollars. He almost asked her to repeat the price but then figured it came with the territory. He handed her a twenty, and when she started digging through the stack of bills on her tray for his change he waved it off.
She clutched his shoulder and bent down to his ear, making sure that she was at an angle that afforded him a look at her full cleavage.
“Thank you, darlin’. I ’preciate that. Let me know if you need anything else.”
“There is one thing. Is Layla here tonight?”
“No, she’s not here.”
Bosch nodded. And the waitress straightened up.
“How about Rhonda then?” Bosch asked.
“That’s Randy up there.”
She pointed to the stage and Bosch shook his head and signaled her to come closer.
“No, Rhonda, like help, help me Rhonda. She working tonight? She was here last night.”
“Oh, that Rhonda. Yeah, she’s around. You just missed her set. She’s probably in the back changing.”
Bosch reached into his pocket for his money and put a five on her bar tray.
“Will you go back and tell her the friend of Tony’s she talked to last night wants to buy her a drink?”
“Sure.”
She squeezed his shoulder again and went off. Bosch’s attention was drawn to the stage, where Randy’s first song had just ended. The next song was “Lawyers, Guns and Money” by Warren Zevon. Bosch hadn’t heard it in a while and he remembered how it had been an anthem among the uniforms back when he had worked patrol.
The dancer named Randy soon slipped out of her outfit and was nude except for a garter stretched tightly around her left thigh. Many of the men got up and met her as she danced her way slowly down the runway. They slid dollar bills under the garter. And when a man put a five under the strap, Randy bent down over him, using his shoulder to steady herself, and did an extra wiggle and kissed his ear.
Bosch watched this and was thinking that he now had a pretty good idea how Tony Aliso ended up with the small handprint on his shoulder, when a petite blond woman slid into the seat next to him.
“Hi. I’m Rhonda. You missed my show!”
“I heard that. I’m sorry.”
“Well, I go back on in a half hour and do it all over again. I hope you’ll stay. Yvonne said you wanted to buy me a drink?”
As if on cue Bosch saw the waitress heading their way. Bosch leaned over to Rhonda.
“Listen, Rhonda, I’d rather take care of y
ou than give my money to the bar. So do me a favor and don’t go exorbitant on me.”
“Exorbitant . . .?”
She crinkled her face up in a question.
“Don’t go ordering champagne.”
“Oh, I gotcha.”
She ordered a martini and Yvonne floated back into the darkness.
“So, I didn’t catch your name.”
“Harry.”
“And you’re a friend of Tony’s from L.A. You make movies, too?”
“No, not really.”
“How do you know Tony?”
“I just met him recently. Listen, I’m trying to find Layla to get a message to her. Yvonne tells me she’s not on tonight. You know where I can find her?”
Bosch noticed her stiffen. She knew something wasn’t right.
“First of all, Layla doesn’t work here anymore. I didn’t know that when I talked to you last night, but she’s gone and won’t be back. And secondly, if you’re a friend of Tony’s, then how come you’re asking me how to find her?”
She wasn’t as dumb as Bosch had thought. He decided to go direct.
“Because Tony got himself killed, so I can’t ask him. I want to find Layla to tell her and maybe warn her.”
“What?” she shrieked.
Her voice cut through the loud music like a bullet through a slice of bread. Everybody in the place, including the naked Randy on the stage, looked in their direction. Bosch had no doubt that everyone in the place must think he had just propositioned her, offering an insulting fee for an equally insulting act.
“Keep it down, Randy,” he quickly said.
“It’s Rhonda.”
“Rhonda then.”
“What happened to him? He was just here.”
“Somebody shot him in L.A. when he got back. Now, do you know where Layla is or not? You tell me and I’ll take care of you.”
“Well, what are you? Are you really his friend or not?”
“In a way I’m his only friend right now. I’m a cop. My name’s Harry Bosch and I’m trying to find out who did it.”
Her face took on a look that seemed even more horrified than when he told her Aliso was dead. Sometimes telling people you were a cop did that.
Harry Bosch Novels, The: Volume 2 Page 50