by Lex Lander
It was after ten before I finished eating. From the restaurant I wandered lonely as a cloud through ranked slots into the casino proper. The general format was similar in essentials to other casinos I had frequented around the world, though not a patch on Monte Carlo for class. The ceiling consisted of overlapping gigantic “pieces of eight” from each centre of which was suspended a chandelier also in the form of a piece of eight with the lights around the perimeter like lace. Roulette, crap, poker were the principal activities. My personal favourite table game was baccarat, a variant of vingt-et-un, but it was a game I only ever played for serious money. This evening I wasn’t in the mood.
For plain old fun, if you don’t mind losing, you can’t beat roulette. Decision made, I bought five hundred dollars worth of chips. Enough, with luck, to see me through the evening. I had no expectation of winning. I had no system. The five hundred was the fee for the amusement, nothing more. At my table were six other players, all older than I. The croupier was male, swarthy of skin, wearing a gold lamé vest. I didn’t touch my pile right away. I wanted to watch him at work. He was deft enough at spinning the wheel and infiltrating the ball. What his feet were doing under the table was not for me to say. Crooked wheels used to be rife in Vegas and elsewhere. These days though, the regulations being so tight, any dodgy operation would not last long.
‘Are you joining us, sir?’ the croupier asked, as he raked in his winnings from the previous spin of the wheel.
‘Why not?’ I said, and laid a $50 chip on the Red square, betting on the colour not the number, paying evens. Just to see what happened. The wheel had two zeros, which was good for the house, bad for the mugs.
The other players glanced at me then away. They placed their next bets and I saw that my stake was the smallest by some margin. They would immediately have rated me small time. My Armani suit on its own wouldn’t convince them otherwise. Hard cash not flash suits were the only currency within these walls.
‘Rien ne va plus,’ the croupier intoned as he set the wheel in motion. His French was Americanised. He pronounced ‘plus’ as ‘ploo’.
The wheel was kind to me.
‘Seven Red,’ the croupier announced.
Nobody else won. They had all placed their bets on individual numbers.
I let my winnings lie: $100 on Red. The guy sitting next to me, who was about twice my age and seriously overweight with it, placed five $500 chips on a corner bet – 7, 8, 10, 11. The rest went with their favourite numbers, or whatever it was that motivated them to accept a thirty-eight to one chance against winning.
‘Rien ne va plus.’
The wheel spun, the little ball trundled along the perimeter. As the wheel decelerated, the ball lost momentum, and clattered through the deflectors to bounce along the pockets, finally settling into Red 11. My fat neighbour whooped. He had won $4500, and I had doubled my stake again. The rest of the table just looked sour.
Judging from the height of his stack of chips the fat one was on a winning streak. He nudged my elbow, guffawed, and shovelled more chips on the table. A rebel yell from across the hall suggested he was not alone in his run of good fortune.
Sometime around the sixth spin of the wheel since my participation (still ahead by $200) a familiar face passed across my line of vision, on the other side of the table. Maura Beck was dressed for business in a dark suit, her hair severely styled with the bow in the nape of her neck. She was talking as she walked, to a youngish guy about the same height, also dark suited, with a white shirt and narrow tie. They were swallowed up by the multitude and the last I saw of her was the back of her head. She clearly kept long hours.
Over the next half hour, my $200 profit shrank to a $250 loss, including a loss when the ball landed in the green 00 pocket, provoking a unanimous groan.
I grew bored. No skill worth mentioning was involved. My fellow players, though rotating at intervals, remained elderly and unattractive. I signalled to the croupier that I was done, and gathered up my five chips. Nobody waved goodbye.
Chips in hand, I was heading for the cashier when lo and behold the Casino Directrice emerged from a doorway on my left and came at me on a converging course, still with the youngish guy in tow. She saw me at the same time as I saw her, slowed, then came on, hoisting a uncertain smile.
‘Well, hi, Mr Freeman,’ she said, PR skills coming on strong. ‘Nice to see you here.’
Her companion fixed me with a hard stare as we all came to a stop.
‘Hi, Mrs Heider,’ I said. ‘You work late.’
Her suit I now saw was charcoal grey, with light grey pin striping; the skirt was about three inches above knee height. She was taller tonight, thanks to sling backs with skinny heels. Every sartorial inch the professional.
She introduced me to the guy. ‘Roger, this is James Freeman.’
We shook hands. ‘Roger Vanderbilt. Glad to know you, Mr Freeman.’
‘Roger’s my security manager,’ Maura amplified. ‘Been with me a long time.’
‘Had any luck?’ Vanderbilt asked me.
‘Yes, past tense. I should have quit while I was ahead.’
They both chortled politely.
Vanderbilt said, ‘If I had a buck for every time I heard that line, I’d be retired by now.’
I prepared to move along.
‘Well, I think I’ll go and drown my losses,’ I said addressing the space between the two of them. ‘See you again.’
Vanderbilt nodded; Maura said, ‘Wait.’ Then to Vanderbilt, ‘I need to speak to Mr Freeman about a personal matter, Roger. Check up on that couple on Table Six and buzz me if I’m needed.’
‘I can handle it,’ he said, and with another dip of the head at me he went off at a purposeful clip.
I put on my earnest, helpful face for Maura. ‘You wanted to talk, Mrs Heider?’ I said.
‘Please. Drop the Mrs Heider. It’s Maura.’
‘Okay. I’m James, as you know.’
‘Let me buy you that drink,’ she said, and set off without waiting for my acceptance.
The bar we went to was in a private area. The hubbub of the gaming hall receded to nothing as we entered. It was walled with wooden panels, decorated with abstract paintings and a few framed photographs of what I took to be big winners displaying checks. Maura featured in a couple of them, her PR smile pasted on.
All the tables were taken, so we sat at the end of the bar counter. She ordered a Perrier for herself, and a vodka with ice for me. The bartender responded with alacrity.
‘Watchdog’s night off?’ I said.
‘Watchdog?’ Her brows contracted. ‘Oh, you mean my dear nephew-in-law, Tricky Nicky. He never works late, and in any case he’s not involved in the casino unless we have a legal issue.’
I sipped my vodka. ‘Is there something I can do for you?’
The extraordinary eyes rested on me. I found myself unsettled by them. I tried to shake off the feeling, to concentrate.
‘No, but there’s something you can tell me.’ She hesitated, played with her glass of Perrier.
‘Don’t be shy,’ I said, a weak attempt at humour.
Her smile was fleeting, mouth only.
‘All right. It’s this: I want to know what you’ll do with the man who killed my husband when you find him.’
‘That all? That’s easy. Pass the proof of his guilt and his whereabouts to Carl. I’m only private fuzz. I have no powers of arrest.’
She looked sceptical. ‘You think he’ll pass that on to the police? I know Carl. He wants revenge and I don’t think life imprisonment will provide it.’
‘Not my concern. Sorry. When I hand the guy over, I get paid, and I wing it back home.’
‘Home being Spain, as I understand it.’
‘One of my homes. In a manner of speaking.’
‘That’s pretty vague. Look, Mr Freeman or whatever your damn name is, I want you to know I don’t agree with what you’re doing.’
‘I see. You don’t want your husband’s
murder avenged?’
‘No. Let sleeping dogs lie. I’m over it.’ A slight hesitancy, then, ‘I got over it very quickly.’
That wasn’t entirely a surprise to me, considering his treatment of her.
‘Then tell Carl how you feel, tell Nick. They’re in the driving seat.’
She shook her head. ‘I daren’t. They’d figure I was disloyal. Don’t forget I’m not a real family member. No blood connection.’ She fiddled some more with her glass, rotating it in her fingers. ‘I don’t really know why I’m telling you this. You’re a stranger. Not only that, you’re in their pay!’ She slid off the stool and would have been long gone had I not restrained her, encircling her upper arm with my fingers. She glared at me with those luminous lapis-lazuli eyes, and tried to prise herself free. The bartender was starting to take an interest.
‘Don’t go, Maura,’ I said, releasing her. ‘Please. Don’t believe me if you don’t want to, but I’m on your side.’
She snorted, but stayed put, rubbing her arm, the glare still in place.
‘You hurt me, you son of a bitch.’
‘I apologise. It’s the beast in me. It comes to life in the presence of a beautiful woman.’
Another snort, converting to a throaty and rather sexy laugh. She remounted the stool.
‘Don’t think you can sweet talk me. I’m not sixteen.’
‘You could almost pass for it.’
‘Oh, bullshit! Cut it out or I really will go.’
‘Okay.’ My flirting technique seemed to be falling on stony ground. ‘You asked me a question, I answered it. Is that all you wanted to know?’
‘You could go home, forget it. Go back to ... to whatever you do when you’re not on a manhunt.’
A group of four men passed by en route for the door. All of them cast approving glances at Maura. She was a woman who would attract a lot of approval from my sex. Not in an obvious, blonde bimbo fashion. She had class and radiated it, and that makes a woman far more tantalising to most men than big tits and a wiggle.
‘Go home, eh?’ I took another swig from my glass. ‘Do you think that would put an end to it? I can’t see the Heiders dropping it on account I let you talk me out of the job.’
She sighed. ‘It’s just that I don’t want any more bloodshed. Jeff’s dead, he’s not going to come back to life because you dig up the killer.’ She frowned at me then, an odd, calculating sort of frown that made me slightly uncomfortable. As if she could see inside my skull, as if she knew something I didn’t. ‘If you do.’
‘Oh, I’ll dig him up, all right. You can bet on that.’
It was either that, or I go down.
‘Bet on it? Well, I’m in the right place for it.’
It was her first display of humour in my presence. I grinned to show my appreciation.
She escorted me as far as the main entrance, where more people were arriving than leaving.
‘Thank you for listening to me,’ she said.
I reached out to give her arm a squeeze, a gentle one this time, conveying a shred of comfort.
‘If ever you want to talk to someone outside the Heider family, just yell.’ I wrote my cell phone number on a page in the little leather-bound notebook I carried around, tore it out and handed it to her.
‘Thank you,’ she said, glancing at it. ‘I’ll remember you said that.’
With that, we parted company. At the curb, I scanned all around for anyone showing too much or too little interest in me. Nobody stood out. I grabbed a cab back to the Renaissance, still on the lookout for tails. If I was followed, they were too good for me to make. At the hotel, in the lounge area adjacent to the lobby, a few insomniacs were scattered about in small groups. As I made for the elevators, the desk clerk called out to me.
‘Good night, Mr Freeman.’
Friendly of him. But for anyone with evil intent waiting for me to show but in some doubt as to my identity, it was a Godsend. Cursing him under my breath, I returned his salutation. A trio of guys instantly left their table and crossed the lobby toward the elevators. They didn’t look like hoodlums, but I diverted to a rack of brochures just the same, and pretended to study the display. According to the digital indicator, the trio went as far as the seventh floor, six below mine. That wasn’t conclusive, as they could have selected a different floor from mine just to fool me.
I entered the second elevator and pushed the pad for the fourteenth. There I got out, scoped the corridor, and scuttled to the emergency door. On alert for an attack I descended by the stairs to the floor below. An empty corridor greeted me. My door was the second along from the emergency exit. In ten seconds flat I was safely inside, the door double-deadlocked. My first act was to unset the combination of the safe. The cocked Ruger in my fist, I listened against the entry door for sounds of movement. All was quiet. Still not entirely satisfied that the three weren’t members of the Tosi mob, I unlocked the door and hopped three paces back. Nobody burst in. A quick glance in both directions down the corridor finally convinced me that the trio had been innocent.
I fired up my tablet, connected the hotel Wi-Fi service, located my email file. Heider was due his first weekly report. Composition required judicious phrasing. Keeping him sweet without giving away too much was the object. The final edit of my message ran thus:
Met with MH and NH. No new information directly from them but N provided the name of a party with useful contacts in Vegas fraternity. The party came up with a suggestion that I am following up. Looks promising but these are early days and I don’t want to say more for now.
Regards
JF
Two-thirty in the morning in Vegas was mid-morning in France. As if he had been hunched over his computer, waiting for my report, Carl Heider responded in the time it takes to compose a short message. He noted what I said and awaited developments. He also stated that he and Richard were returning to Houston at the weekend, and provided a landline telephone number.
The stuff about returning to Houston meant nothing to me. He was letting me off the hook for an additional week, that was all that counted. Giving me the breathing space I needed to plan and scheme to set up Silvano Tosi as the murderer of Jeff Heider. If Silvano didn’t set me up first.
Tired but not sleepy, my thoughts drifted in the direction of Maura Beck/Heider. At a surface level, my interest in her was the attraction of a hetero male for a more than merely attractive female. But that was only part of the story. My instinct told me that our little tête-à-tête at the Pieces of Eight had not been all it seemed.
Yes, I could believe that she didn’t want the murder of her husband resurrected. I could also believe that she was glad he was out of her life. I could even believe that her love for him had died someplace along the line that ran from the day of their marriage to the day of his death. So what was she afraid of? Evoking bad memories? Surely not enough of a motive to cause her to warn me off the job. After all I could simply be replaced by another hit man posing as a private eye. If the Heider men learned about her heresy, they wouldn’t be pleased with her. She had taken a gamble that I wouldn’t report our conversation. In a sense too, it suggested her warning was specific to me. That it was me she was trying to dissuade. For the contract itself, she couldn’t care less.
It all added up to a mess of something, without doubt. I was still trying to figure out what it was when I fell off the cliff of consciousness into an uneasy sleep.
NINE
If I were to go through with my plan to groom Silvano Tosi as the killer of Jeff Heider, I needed to treat the operation as a regular contract, requiring all the usual precautions and preparations. Tosi was to assume the role of victim, deserving or not. His command post, and his haunts, and even his habits, had to be thoroughly cased.
It could be done by going to Reno and asking around in the right quarters. High risk factor though, and it might take a while to produce a result. Word would get back to him at some point that someone was asking about him. It had already happened i
n Vegas, even though I was only peripherally interested in him and his business at the time.
The alternative was to make contact with Randazzo again. The results should be quicker, though the risk would be even higher, trusting Randazzo not to leak my renewed snooping to the Tosi family. Unless I shut his mouth with money or threats. Or disposal.
The longer it took before I zeroed in on Silvano, the greater the danger, so it made sense to take the fast track. I decided to pump Randazzo and bribe him to keep it to himself.
To pass the day I spent twice my usual hour in the hotel gym and took a ride to the 1100ft high observation lounge of the Stratosphere Tower. The outlook was worth the effort. In truth though, the Vegas experience was beginning to pall on me. Maybe it would be fun if I had a significant other to share it with. Or if I were gambling fixated. On my own, with no particular yen to squander money on the tables or at the slots, it could have been Anytown, Anyplace.
I lingered over lunch, napped at the hotel afterwards, and finally rolled up at the Griffin at six. The place was middling occupied. In particular, Randazzo was there ahead of me, slouched over what I took to be bourbon, wearing the same windcheater and cords, in deep dialogue with Blondie, the dreadlocked bartender.
‘Hi, Regan,’ I said as I docked beside him.
His head snapped round. Recognition was a moment or two coming. Apprehension was not far behind.
‘Ah, yeah ... yeah. How you doing?’
‘Better than your friend Cesare.’
‘My ... friend?’ His Adam’s apple bobbed. Mentally he was getting ready to run for it.
Blondie’s gaze went from one to the other of us. Even from his side of the bar the tension was probably palpable.
‘Don’t worry, Regan. No need to go into panic mode. I’m here to make a contribution to your benefit fund.’
Blondie let rip a hoot. ‘How ’bout that, Reeg? This honky goan’ cross yo’ goddam palm with silver.’