by L. J. Martin
We've learned enough about Tobias Roth to know he likes to make at least one pass around the gaming floor every afternoon and again every night to glad hand the customers…with a pair of his bodyguards discretely a few steps away. The word is he pays a little more attention to the beautiful women and to the men who have a large stack of black chips at hand. So I go straight to the window and put fifty black one hundreds and a hundred green twenty-fives on my Amex, not that I plan to gamble anywhere near the seventy-five hundred. But you gotta put on a show. And in this club, if you're a Caucasian, that's a fairly good pile.
Pax heads for a dollar slot that backs up to the twenty-five minimum blackjack table where I’m sitting between a guy who looks like a long-haul trucker. He’s wearing a Freightliner bill cap, six days growth of beard, and a Carhartt jacket. The blond chick next to him is in a red-spangled dress that shows not only cleavage but damn near dips to her belly button. A working girl I presume, probably a shill for the house as she's batting her eyes at the trucker, me, and a pair of Asian guys to her left. Any red-blooded American man would want to join a table she occupies.
Her eyes light up when I place over seven grand in chips on the green felt, and flip a black out for the next hand. I'm not, however, the big gun at the table; one of the Asian guys is thumbing twice as many blacks and a half dozen multicolored stacks. Seeing me bet, he curls a lip and bets five hundred.
I smile, draw a pair of queens and the lady a pair of tens, and he busts, as does the dealer, which seems to piss Charley Chan off. He mumbles something to the guy on his left, another Asian, but it's an unintelligible mouthful of gobbledygook I can't understand. I drop to betting a green with each hand, as I have to last until Roth makes his pass around the floor, and no one knows what time that will be. And I'm not really here to gamble, but only to trade a few words with Roth.
We haven't figured a way to get next to him, so I've decided to attract his attention enough to make him want to get next to me.
My phone rattles as I have it on silent and I glance to see I have a call from Sol. I nod to the dealer, “I've got to take this, deal me out for a hand or two,” and turn away and accept the call.
“Yep,” I say.
“Roth has received and made several calls. An interesting one was to an employee, Lyndon Thunder-Growing—”
“Thunder-Growing?”
“Yes, Thunder-Growing, a Paiute Indian, and that's the interesting part.”
“Make it quick, I'm at the blackjack table.”
“I also got into Zebrowski's phone, thanks to former calls made by Roth—”
“To Det Zebrowski?”
“Yes, and the last place we have a location on his phone is on the Moapa Reservation north of Vegas. It hasn't been used in a while. GPS says it's on or very near a place owned by a John Thunder-Growing. More on him later.”
“Good work. That it?”
“Yeah, except I'm with Roth, listening in, who's headed down the elevator to make his rounds, if you're interested.”
“Later,” I say, and punch the disconnect.
I go back to the game, betting a green, until I see Roth making his way down the line of tables, stopping at the craps table and pressing the flesh, then moving my way. When he gets only a table away, I bet five blacks, the table limit of five hundred.
He's flanked by a pair of no-necks, one who must be six-five and trim, and another only six foot but built like the proverbial brick outhouse. His fingers look the size of corncobs. Both boys have military haircuts, the taller prematurely gray, the brick shithouse red-orange.
Roth himself is not nearly as handsome as his photo portrays—Photoshop does wonders. He's the same guy, but his hairline is more receding, his face is pockmarked, and his ears longer showing his nearly seventy years. His teeth are perfect, probably a twenty-grand cap job. And he's proud of them, flashing them with wide, if phony, smiles at the customers dumping dough on the tables.
I draw a five and four, and the dealer shows a six, so logic says it's double down time, and as Roth steps up behind me, I ask the dealer, “Can I double down on a nine…doubling the table limit?”
The pit boss has noticed my bet and is already close behind the dealer, who turns to him and gets a nod.
“Good luck,” Roth says from over my shoulder. I glance back and give him a nod as he continues to watch the play.
I'm hit with an eight, giving me seventeen which makes me smile…but only slightly.
The dealer rolls his down card and damn if it isn't a four. Then he tops it with a jack for a twenty, beating me like a red-headed stepchild.
I hear Roth say, “Too bad, partner. Next time…”
And I spin on my chair. “How's Trixi?” I ask.
He colors, his eyes narrow, and his smile disappears. “You know Trixi?”
“And Zebrowski. How's ol' Det?”
“I don't know any Zebrowski,” he says; his jaw knots he moves away.
“Been up to the rez lately, Mr. Roth?” I call after him.
That stops him, but he doesn't turn. He says something to the taller of the bodyguards, and keeps moving. I guess the glad-handing is over as he strides across the gaming floor, ignoring others who speak to him, and goes straight to the elevator.
My phone shudders again and I grab it up. Sol, I know, has Roth's phone microphone on and is listening to his every word.
“Watch it, Mike,” Sol says. “He told somebody to rattle your cage, then bring you up to his office. Don't go.”
“Thanks, Sol,” I say and watch as Roth's bodyguards leave him at the elevator and fade off, each going different directions and disappearing behind the slots. The elevator doors close with him staring at me.
I glance at Pax, who's on his phone, I presume now talking to Sol. He hits the disconnect and nods to me, acknowledging that he knows what's coming down.
I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the ka ka is not about to hit the fan.
30
I play half a dozen or more hands, winning and losing, then my phone wiggles again.
“Yep,” and it's Sol.
“They're onto Pax. I guess Roth has already reviewed some club security video and saw you two in the parking lot and saw you come in the back door together.”
“Thanks. Clue Pax in.”
“You know I will.” I glance at my phone and see it's a few minutes after two, and if Pax is going to make his aforementioned return to the condo by four, I guess it's time to see what's going to come down.
I tip the dealer a green and head to the cage, noticing that the tall, prematurely gray no-neck is pacing me a couple of rows of slots away. He's hard to miss as he's head and shoulders above the machines.
I'm sorry to say I only have six thousand two hundred fifty to pocket, but do so and see I'm flanked a dozen paces on each side, now surrounded by both no-necks.
I notice Pax a hundred feet away, feeding a machine, but actually watching me and the bodyguards.
No sense in playing coy now as they know we're together, so I head straight for him.
“Hey, I'm winning here,” he says as I slap him on the shoulder and head for the back door. I can tell you the two no-necks didn't learn their trade in the CIA or FBI, or any professional police organization, as they are obvious, pacing us on each side, but a couple of rows away.
“You see any reason to give them the advantage?” I ask as we hit the back door, pass through a vestibule to a second row of doors, and walk out into a covered parking garage.
“No reason at all,” he replies. The two are only a dozen paces behind, when the taller one yells.
“Hey, security here.”
We stop and turn, separated by four paces.
They close to within arm’s length. The one doing the talking continues, giving me a phony smile.
“Mr. Roth would like to have a word with you.”
“Who?” I say, innocently.
“Mr. Roth, who owns the club. You spoke to him inside.”
“No kidding, that old fart owns this place—”
He makes the mistake of seeming to get irritated with my calling his boss an old fart, then grabbing my left arm to drag me inside. I whip my left under his right and arm-bar him up onto his toes, then drive a smashing right into a very surprised look. We're doing a little circle dance and he would go down but I still have the arm barred and hit him again, again, and again, as blood spurts from nose and a split eyebrow. He's trying to collapse so I let him. I turn to see how Pax is doing with the beer-barrel-sized other one, and am not surprised to see ol' beer barrel flat on his back, gurgling blood. He'll be wondering where his front teeth went when he awakens.
“Damn, that must have been a hell of a blow,” I say, admirably.
He smiles as he removes a pair of brass knuckles from his right hand. “One shot…but I had a little assistance,” he says, and grins.
“You know those are illegal?” I say, laughing.
“Oh, no, I guess I'll have to melt them down for scrap when I'm eighty-five or so. Besides, when a guy outweighs you by over fifty pounds these should be legal.”
We head for the jeep and as we pass the two still flat on the pavement, another two run from the building, waving their arms and yelling. I resist giving them the bird as it would be unprofessional, but laugh, and wave.
As we whip out into traffic, Pax gives me his Ricky Ricardo Cuban imitation, “You've done it now, Lucy.”
“I bet,” I say, with a little actual concern in my voice, “that Mr. Roth will now want a command performance. It should be very interesting what Sol and his FinSpy pick up. Suggest we both keep a close watch over our shoulders…and, poor you, you have to go to a party tonight and won't have me to take care of you.”
“Yes, but I'll have the beautiful Cindy taking care of me. And besides, who'd be foolish enough to take on Captain America?”
“And I'm leaving town, so I'll be hard to find if you need help with Roth's people. Or more likely, with Cindy. I'm sure you can't handle that little job.”
“Ha. You heading for Palm Springs and the cougar?”
“Nope, the other way. Just up the road to Moapa to call on Mr. Thunder-Growing…and see if Mr. Zebrowski is hanging out in the neighborhood. Sol says the last hit on his phone was from John Thunder-Growing's property, or very near it. And there's a Lyndon Thunder-Growing who's a Maxmillian's employee.”
“If Zebrowski is there, I have the feeling he's got dirt in his face.”
I shrug. “He'll be hard to find if so, but it's worth the wander.”
“I'll try…Cindy and I'll try and get along without you.”
“Fuck you.”
31
Seeing no reason to get to the rez until the work day is over, I over, I decide to give Pax a bad time as he gets ready to put the move on beautiful Cindy at the costume ball.
And, as suspected, I get a good laugh watching Pax suit up as Captain America. He's got more chest than whoever plays the action character on screen, and biceps that strain the suit, but the legs fit a little on the weird side as his short leg throws things a little off and all he's got that will work with the suit are black high-tops, the left with an extra inch lift. I'll bet Pax has ten grand in shoes as he has to have them made, or at least remade.
I know enough not to tease him as he's a little touchy about the leg, particularly from me, and rightly so as he lost that chunk saving my ass. So I lay off ragging him. Actually, he looks pretty damn good...although I hope the beautiful Cindy—Wonder Woman I understand—will think he looks like a dip shit. Not likely. I'd like to be the one to pump her for information, to risk a pun.
My van is parked on the street because his condo garage is packed with his Harley, a CJ5 jeep that's older but totally tricked out with a blown, balanced and now 450 horsepower Chevy. But he's going all out tonight, driving the candy apple Mercedes 550 that seems to interest the ladies more than the jeep. Even though he probably has an equal amount of dough in each.
I laugh as he slips behind the wheel. “I'd advise you to lose the mask. You drive by a high school and you'll get busted for trolling for teenagers.”
“Very funny. But going on the rez asking questions may not be so funny...be careful.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Ha ha. Check in with me by eleven. Got it?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“I'll cap your dumb ass.”
“Okay, how about, yes sir, Mr. America.”
“Right, don't get your dumb ass scalped.”
“I won't do anything you wouldn't do,” I say.
He laughs. “Then tell the whole friggin' reservation get the fuck out of the way.”
The Moapa River Indian Reservation is an hour or so north of Vegas, just off Highway 15, so I head for my ministorage and my Harley. It's a good afternoon for a ride, just under a hundred degrees which is unusual for Vegas in the summer.
The rez is the home to the Moapa Band of Paiute Indians, at one time two million acres. Of course when the white-eye got through with them in 1876 it was reduced to an even one thousand. They weren't recognized as an official Indian tribe until 1942; then finally, in 1980, the feds gave them back their own land and they became a little over seventy thousand acres strong.
They had to be tough folks to survive in some of America's most inhospitable country. But they'd hunted and farmed from a time long before we Europeans wandered down through the Virgin River Canyon to Las Vegas Springs. Now there's the Moapa Paiute Travel Plaza consisting of a casino, a motel, service station and restaurant catering to the freeway traffic, a Mormon Tabernacle, and a huge fireworks store bragging the largest and most comprehensive selection of fireworks in the west. The flats around the small village is a flood plain and some is fairly good farmland. It’s surrounded by sandstone formations and borders Red Rock State Park, which in turn borders Lake Mead on the Colorado River.
Every time I've driven Interstate 15 through the reservation I've admired these folks for being so very tough to have survived in this hostile environment.
I had a good deal of survival training in the Corps, including the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center in the High Sierra. But even that frigid weather training doesn't compare, in my mind, to surviving in this rocky desert. I wish I'd had a few of these boys in my platoon in Iraq...they'd have thought Iraq a paradise compared to this wasteland.
Of course home is heaven if you were raised there.
It's still light when I roll into the casino parking lot and park my bike. I'm in hot weather riding gear, light leathers, black helmet, a Molon Labe t-shirt proclaiming my belief in the 2nd Amendment, as does my NRA bill cap, and combat boots.
The casino—now under a new hardened tent that looks a little like Barnam and Bailey—is not the Paris or Bellagio, but it's clean and I'm impressed with the look of the Paiutes...a handsome people compared to many desert tribes I've seen. In fact a couple of the young ladies serving are more than merely handsome. Of course the place is filled with tourists and other white-eyes trying to take money from the Paiute coffers, but most rather contributing to them.
Sol has sent me, via email, a rundown on the Thunder-Growing family. Mama, Siama, a name I have no idea the meaning of, who's nickname is Silly, works at the casino as the only Keno runner; papa, John, runs a few hogs and sheep and has some heavy equipment. And their three kids: Lyndon, the oldest, works valet parking at The Majestic; Pretty Hawk, middle child and a girl, a fry cook at the casino restaurant, goes by Pretty. And Little Fox, who goes by Fred and is in the Nevada State Prison at Carson City, a not so pleasant place to live, built in 1862 of cold stone. And he's not a guard or cook but rather an inmate doing a nickel for armed robbery to feed a meth habit. You can imagine that you don't want to live in a joint...pun...built well over a hundred years ago. Seems young Fred fell to the joys of one of the country's worst scourges, methamphétamine. Eventually stealing from everyone you know seems to be a given.
Why any even semi-intelligent
human being would try meth, or even get within ten feet of the crap, is beyond me.
That said it's time to go to work.
The cocktail waitress is no Norwegian, with eyes like ebony pebbles and hair as shiny black as a raven's wing and twice as long. It swings, brushing the top of a beautiful gluteus maximus, as she walks away to fetch my Jack on the rocks. I have no idea if this is Silly, the Growing-Thunder mama...but I seriously doubt it. If I have an excuse to deepen the relationship with this lady which so far consists of me ordering a drink, no matter who she is, it will be my pleasure to do so. But then I see a Keno runner, who's built more like a barrel chair than the shapely wench I'd hoped for—she's shapely, like one of those blow up dolls twice the size on the bottom as the top. But she's got the raven wing black hair as well, only hers is streaked with gray. Oh, well, that's how my luck’s been running. As she passes, with keno slips in hand, I call out, “Hey, Silly!”
She stops short and spins on a heel. “You got a ticket?”
“No, but if you'll pick ten for me I'll buy fifty bucks worth.”
She giggles. “Boss won't let me pick for the customers.”
“You're a cutie. What time you get off work?”
“Not till three.”
“A.M.?”
“Yep. Too late for you?” I can see she's only teasing.
“I got an early shift in the morning, starting at four. I do believe you'd be worth a weekend, not just a half hour.”
She giggles again. Then extends a bottom lip in a pout. “I got to work weekends. Besides, I'm old enough to be your mama and married to a bad-ass Paiute who'd love to have your liver with a pile of scrambled quail eggs.”
I laugh. “I love mature women. When's your break?” I ask, giving her a wink.
“If a half hour won't work, I'm pretty sure fifteen minutes won't.”
It's my turn to laugh. “I was actually thinking about buying you a cup of coffee.”