Murder in Vegas: New Crime Tales of Gambling and Desperation

by Michael Connelly

  The scene played in slow motion on my mental computer, now on overload. Jeannine. No longer a flat-chested, pimply teen-ager. Oh, no. Saw two guys at the table near the doorway stop and stare.

  Glad Marge was there with me, otherwise I wouldn’t have known what to do.

  Hey, give me a murder scene and I can handle that. Hate these family things, emotional things.

  Jeannine floated over, the guys behind her watching, wondering when they could make a move on her.

  I stuck out my hand, not knowing what the proper etiquette was, but I needn’t have worried. Women know the right things to do. And she was a woman. Holy cow, I produced this creature?

  She gave me a kiss on the cheek and sat down on the padded bench beside me, her arm through mine for a minute.

  We chatted. No, Marge and Jeannine chatted like they’d known each other for years. I just grunted occasionally. In top form for me, socially.

  Jeannine went over to talk with the maitre d’. Gave him a bunch of orders I was sure. Bowing and scraping was not quite the word, because he wasn’t that kind of a guy. He was the kind of a maitre d’ who would give her anything. That’s Las Vegas. Anything, anytime.

  But he knew her. She came here a lot? The cop in me still observing. Dinner was—the best I’ve ever had. Raymond Cabernet, yes. But a year not on the winelist, and judging by the other prices, off the Richter scale for my budget. It was liquid velvet. Drinking the wine, I could believe myself a connoisseur. Now I understood the words—complex, flavors, nose.

  When the last of the lobster shells disappeared into the sunset, I was a P.I. again.

  “The reason I’m in town,” I said, and told her what she should know to answer my questions.

  “Is that the reason you called me?” Her eyes held a hint of amusement exactly like her mother’s. My mother, her mother. She brought the women of my life, who were no longer on this planet, alive. I took a gulp of water. Then I realized from her words, somehow I had missed a cue. I looked at Marge, but she looked as mystified as I felt. Jeannine must have sensed our confusion if she couldn’t read the stupid look on my face.

  “I thought you were asking me because of the security system at the Mirage.”

  “Kendall Security Systems,” I said slowly, guessing that there was no coincidence.

  “I am Kendall Security Systems,” she said.

  Afterwards Marge assured her that we had no idea. Marge kept looking at me, but I can’t fool her, so she knew I was telling the truth about not knowing about the connection. Then I wondered if Doug had thought I was part of Kendall, or if he just hired me for the past jobs because we had worked together. Maybe both.

  We got back to my questions. “Why would anyone want to steal them?” I asked her.

  Without batting a blonde curly eyelash, she went to the heart of the matter. “The tigers are the Mirage’s drawing card. It’s what sets them apart from all the other hotels here. Everyone’s looking for a shtick. Without it, they are just another hotel. Without the tigers, the Mirage might be in serious financial trouble. They have a way high profit margin and operate on that. If they drop even one percent, they could have a problem. Without the tigers …” she let the sentence hang. “I’m guessing, they’ll hold the tigers for ransom.”

  I looked at her face, intelligent, and watched the words form in her mouth. I had two brains. One brain processed the information she gave me. Now the ‘why’ made sense.

  The other brain listened to my mother, pre-me, talking. I shut that part of my brain down.

  “So what will they do with the tigers if they get the ransom?”

  “They don’t need them, can’t use them or exhibit them, so they’ll probably kill them.”

  A frozen hand clutched my heart. I gasped. Not on my watch. No way, José. Don’t even think about touching the tigers while I’m responsible for them, I wanted to shout to the world.

  “There’s an element here in Las Vegas who would do anything to make more money. And there’s an element here, Dad, who would help them do it.”

  Dad.

  For a moment I was back being a social oaf. That brain door had sprung open.

  I slammed it shut.

  Back to work.

  “Do you have any names?” I pulled out my notebook.

  Doug would probably know them. I wondered if that thought had occurred to him. Since the tip came from out of town, maybe he wasn’t looking at locals.

  “I had the tour with Melissa and Karen, so I know the basics. Anything else you can tell me about the security system?”

  “I’ve got stuff in there I never even told the Mirage about.”

  “You’re checking employees?” I thought about Doug. Did he know? Was he one of them? I hoped not. But there was a lot of money to be made in Las Vegas, greed eased a lot of consciences.

  She laughed. “Would you believe animal abuse complaints?”

  Yeah, I would.

  “We want to be sure that when we go to the D.A., the complaint’s not going to go anywhere. In fact, those two get treated better than our homeless.”

  The tigers were in their den, both lazing around, only a few people and no kids banging on the glass. Everyone at the parade—and the fireworks.

  I was crouched in the chute that connected their indoor den and the show one. The iron gate separating me from the tigers was down and pinned in place. No way it was going to be moved. No matter what happened. At the other end of the chute, their path to their indoor lair, was locked on the inside. In essence, I was locked in, but I was the one who could do the unlocking. The smell of the tigers was strong in their chute. Had they marked their territory?

  There was another entrance to the den about twenty feet away, a door for maintenance, feeding, and all the people who cared for the tigers.

  It came down to the fact that I had to trust someone on the inside to get into the chute. I swore her to secrecy. Tell no one, not even your bedmate. I played on her love for the tigers, her babies. She was momma. If she told, they would die, that’s the way I put it to her, no finesse used. She had to be with me one hundred percent otherwise I could be the tigers’ next meal and looking at them blue eye to blue eye made me feel like the main course.

  My gut instinct was usually right. Besides that, she was the one with the most to lose in this caper.

  Melissa, the human mom. She was the only other person who knew what I was going to do. Not the head of Kendall Security Systems. Not Doug. Not even my bedmate.

  I had boots on, a work jumpsuit that Melissa had outfitted me with, and covered with some sort of aroma that tigers weren’t interested in and that negated my human smell.

  Don’t wear any cologne or hairspray, Melissa had warned me, or anything with a fragrance.

  Crouched down, my calves whimpering, I wondered how long I could hold out. Stakeouts had never been my long suit. And I couldn’t have a cigarette. Fireworks at 9. I was sure that’s when they were going to make their move.

  Move. There was a movement off to my right.

  Herbie. Hose in hand.

  He cleaned up at night? With the tigers in the den?

  He placed the hose carefully over a concrete crag, then climbed to the top of the concrete mountain. It took me a moment to remember the built-in ladder on the other side.

  What was he doing?

  Bright light flooded the den.

  What the hell!

  The tigers got up and padded across the side of the pool toward me. Some signal for them? Daylight? Some sound? Now it was time for them to go into the night den?

  They couldn’t get through the grate that separated us. The smell of their bodies and their hot breath made me sweat. They were so close. The male and I were looking each other in the eye. Blue to blue.

  They weren’t cute anymore, not nose to nose, they were jungle animals, man eating tigers. He checked me out, his tongue licking the sides of his mouth.

  Their smell drifting toward me on the draft.

  I
didn’t move a muscle except my eyes. I couldn’t even close my eyelids.

  Sweat was coming out of every pore probably canceling out whatever that stuff was that Melissa had put on me. Bored, the tigers drifted away.

  I tried to bring my heart rate down. Herbie was doing something. The light—a helicopter!

  Why hadn’t I foreseen that?

  Cops never look up, that’s a known fact. Hide anything above eye level and it’s safe.

  The tigers gathered around the foot of the ladder. Maybe Herbie wasn’t about to descend all the way.

  Grappling hooks. Two of them came down. One landed in the pool. The other conked Herbie on the head. He yelped. I saw blood.

  Everything was perfectly clear in the light.

  The tigers looked interested.

  Herbie pulled out a gun.

  No!

  I scrabbled for the grate and yanked the pin, out along with my forty-five.

  A tiger put his paws on the bottom rung.

  Herbie shot.

  I shot.

  Herbie fell.

  The tigers investigated.

  I stood there shocked.

  A heavy net dropped through the opening. I stared at it trying to compute what was going to happen.

  Holy shit!

  Herbie must have had a tranquilizer gun. They were going to airlift the tigers out after they’d been tranquilized.

  Then I had another thought. How was Herbie, a hundred-pound weakling, going to drag a six-hundred-pound unconscious tiger onto a net that was now dangling in the pool along with the grappling hook?

  I didn’t have to wonder long.

  The human-size door opened again, and in walked Godzilla. Not quite but almost. He wore a grey sharkskin suit, tailored for him. Who had shoulders like that? Bull head, hair slicked back. This was not a guy I wanted to meet anywhere. He looked at me and then at the tigers.

  “What the fuck is going on? I heard two shots, they’d supposed to be out by now.” He thought I was Herbie? Herbie was out of sight, sprawled in a concrete ditch.

  “Shoot them,” he said. Did he think I had a tranquilizer gun?

  One of the tigers growled. That was enough for me to step back. A big step.

  He had his own gun out and I saw him push off the safety and aim for the tiger as it took another step forward.

  Godzilla backed up.

  In the background I heard the fireworks, overhead, the roar of the helicopter.

  Think! Think!

  “Wait,” I said, “I’ll tranquilize them, you get out for a minute and then we can haul them off. Everything’s under control.”

  “Shoot ’em now or I will.”

  “Boss wants them alive.” I made a wild guess.

  “Fuck it. The chopper can’t stay there forever.”

  The tiger took another step. I thought he was just curious, but then I wasn’t the one it was advancing on. Godzilla must be sweating. Probably didn’t smell too good, or maybe he smelled really good to the tiger.

  Bam!

  The human-size door hit the wall and there stood Melissa.

  Oh, shit!

  “I saw what happened. What’s going on? What are you doing to Rufus and Betty?”

  Rufus and Betty?

  “Who are you?” The human momma tiger. Even Godzilla was about to back away from her, then he remembered the tiger. The lady or the tiger?

  “Rufus, back,” she said in a commanding voice like she was talking to a puppy.

  “You,” this to Godzilla, “Put that gun away, he’s not going to hurt you.”

  I glanced from the tiger to Melissa. Who would I believe?

  Godzilla looked at her like she’d just dropped from Venus. He was trying to keep the gun on the tiger in front of him and Melissa behind him.

  Then she saw me. “What are you doing?” she said to me. “You lied to me. You’re the one who’s going to steal the tigers.”

  Godzilla’s head was swiveling between us. Good, he thought I was with him.

  Or did Melissa really believe I was one of the bad guys?

  “Get over there,” he told her, gesturing to Rufus.

  “Yes, of course, I’m moving slowly, because it’s not a good idea to move quickly. Good, Rufus, come to mommy.”

  She was even with Godzilla now. The tiger moved toward her.

  Godzilla was bringing his gun up, aiming at the tiger. I was sure he was about to fire off a round at it.

  All of a sudden there was a hiss and Godzilla was screaming. Rufus backed up fast. Melissa was spraying Godzilla like he was a cockroach. I could smell the stuff—Mace.

  Rufus didn’t like the smell and was moving away.

  Betty was taking playful—for a tiger—swats at Herbie who looked like he was moving.

  I ran over and kicked Godzilla’s gun away as he groveled on the cement.

  “Put this on,” Melissa shoved a mask at me and put one on herself. “I’m going to get Rufus and Betty out of here. Who’s that? Herbie? What’s he doing here? This place has more people than the viewing area.” Her voice sounded strange through the mask.

  “Call an ambulance,” I said, my voice sounding weird also. “And Security.”

  “I am Security,” she said, pulling out handcuffs and bending over the writhing Godzilla, “For Kendall Security Systems.”

  She wrestled with positioning his wrists. “Your daughter says Hi.”

  MISCAST

  MICKI MARZ

  “Bounced him on his head till his neck broke,” Aram said.

  “What a stupid sonofabitch,” Eugene said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Aram said.

  The overturned bucket on which Aram sat rocked, because the handle ends bent but did not flatten on the floor. He scooted the bucket nearer the wall and leaned his spine against a stud for better balance, then closed his eyes as if to saw some Zs.

  Eugene did worry about it. He said, “Bo had better get his ass in gear or he’s gonna be meat hangin’ on the rack hisself one o’ these days, go around actin’ like that.”

  “Shuddup, Eugene,” Aram said, like a man mumbling in his dreams.

  “Shuddup yourself, Armpit.”

  Jim Daniels walked around the two men and stopped a few feet from the window with the yellow coating bubbled up and cracked. Behind it, a flit of wings became a fast shadow and then was gone. Jim rotated his head to give the chubby one, Eugene, that look that would catch a shirt afire. “You’re it, Eugene. You’re gonna kill him.”

  “Not me! No way. No fuckin’ way. I ain’t killin’ him.” He pushed off from a short file cabinet on which he had been perched. “I ain’t killed nobody in my whole damn life and I ain’t gonna start now.”

  Jim looked through a peeled portion of the coated window again and said, “Your choice.”

  And poor Eugene knew right then that if he didn’t give in to Jimmy D this time he’d have to the next. That, or Jimmy D would mark him for doom down the road. You were either with Jimmy or ag’in him. Eugene broke out in a cool sweat in the shed that served as an office for the auto salvage yard Jimmy D owned on the edge of Henderson. The thermometer outside read 98 degrees.

  It wasn’t Bo, the nutcase who bounced the life out of an enemy, that Jim Daniels had it in for. This month, anyway. It was an actor kid from L.A.

  Jimmy opened the door of his shed-office and went to check on the new hire he had tasked with moving General Motors cars to a different spot in the yard, to the middle section instead of the end. He wanted the Jap cars at the back of the yard. While he strung a yellow line of plastic tape to demarcate the end of where the ShitZu-Itzi-Sans should go, he cast a gaze at the mesquite stand by the culvert this side of the south razorwire fence. Things there were still where they should be, no man or animal appearing to have worked the ground.

  He approved the workman’s work so far and went on down the rows, mentally taking inventory. All the while, that actor squirt kept popping up in his mind, for Jim D was a bitter man. He didn’
t start out that way, but it’s what the world made of him, is what he told his latest ex-wife. He even knew he was obsessing over that actor dumbo, but he learned a long time ago that he couldn’t fight it when something like that came over him, so he might as well make his plans.

  Pinhead thought he was such hot steamin’ shit. Even that attitude Jimmy would have been able to overlook, if the clown didn’t have to go and shit on Jimmy’s doorstep. No, the shrimp took something from him, and that was not going to go unpunished. In a softer second, Jim thought maybe he wouldn’t kill him. Just mess him up. Yeah, that’s the ticket. See how many casting directors would slot him for a show then, buddy.

  The actor entered his life one late afternoon when he and Aram and Eugene were coming off the water at Lake Mead, at a spot about fifty miles north of Vegas. Jimmy didn’t like talking away no prize, but the day had been restful, and at that hour he liked seeing the lake form a blue hole in its center as the ripples at the edges increased. He liked seeing how the reeds turned a deeper green on the underside as a stronger wind laid them over. He enjoyed the ring of mountains turning rose at top and purple at the bottom with the sun’s slow going down.

  Aram was driving. Eugene started in with his harmonica. Jimmy was cool about it all until the notes called up that picture again of how his wife looked the day she told him their account was dry and so was she, goodbye.

  Jimmy was about to knock that bar of metal out of Eugene’s hand when Aram called their attention to a pair with their truck high-centered on a boulder. Dumb shits did it while hauling out their boat. Nice boat, too. Okay, thanks, thanks, all around when the rescue job got done. Now get the fuck out o’ my territory, dorko.

  But Jimmy didn’t have that feeling right then. No, it was not until the next afternoon when the emotion formed itself into a thing that could be spoken, when they again returned from the lake with only a couple of stripers, no bluegill, no trout, no catfish. Again they met up with the actor and his woman, this time in Overton, thirteen or so miles from his fishing spot. At first it was just disdain for dumbfuck’s manner, his look, his too-happy take on the world. Take this, suckah, was the unarticulated feeling in Jimmy then. The three were eating hamburgers in the Red Rooster when they saw the actor again. Mark Mandelkorn was his name. He came in with his twig of a girlfriend and commenced to brag about what a great angler he was. Three sheets to the wind after only a couple of beers, when he starts giving a fishing lesson. Shit.